Storage and Compute
Error Detection and Correction, EDAC, is a set of Linux kernel modules for handling hardware-related errors. Its major focus has been ECC memory error handling, however it also detects and reports PCI bus parity errors. This post on the ION Server Blog looks at how that fits on modern servers. Continue reading Linux EDAC modules on Server Systems
ion has added a new option to its SR-71mach6 SpeedServer™ Configurator to allow the selection of Intel® Optane™ SSDs from the 905P Enthusiast series. Compared to Intel’s Optane DC P4800X series, this family continues to deliver an Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate (UBER) of 1 sector per 10^17 bits read but the endurance drops from an astounding 60 full drive writes per day to only Continue reading ion SR-71mach6 adds Enthusiast-series Optane™ drive options
SSDs in servers deliver performance, whether measured in IOPS or GBps or latency, that is just plain impossible with disks. SSD capacity is now greater than that of performance disks. Price is the factor that still keeps many organizations away from deploying servers with SSD storage when the improved performance is not a significant benefit. The better reliability of SSD might be more important. Continue reading SSD vs HDD RAID in Servers and Storage
Most “server” deployments deserve a rich, robust server platform with redundant power, redundant cooling, redundant storage, multiple network paths and error-correcting memory, but many servers already have redundant applications and redundant data. In some of these deployments it then becomes reasonable to consider a small, cool, low-power alternative approach with redundant storage and two network interfaces for redundant communications. ion calls that a miniSERVER. Continue reading ion miniSERVER
As part of ION’s extensive benchmarking of the SR-71mach5 SpeedServer platform, ION uncovered a memory leak in Windows Server 2012 R2 acting as an SMB3 File Server under very heavy load. There does not seem to be an issue with larger blocks or when the queue depth is low, but you can watch it in action here while serving 8kB random reads with 16 Continue reading Memory Leak Found
Is there any good reason remaining to use anything other than mirrored (RAID 1) SSDs for server boot drives? A recent conversation got me thinking about this subject. So far, no reasons have come to mind. More and more servers are virtualized every month, but even as that trend progresses, more physical servers are being deployed, too, and they need to boot from something. Continue reading Server Boot
There are many opinions on the benefits and liabilities of SSD RAID floating around the Internet; ION’s experience with SSD RAID differs dramatically from some of it. ION’s SR-71mach4 SpeedServer™ is a server and storage platform optimized for and with SSD RAID. This article shares some observations on the performance and endurance of SSDs in RAID usage, and examines and compares performance in different Continue reading SSD RAID
Or, How Many Eggs in One Basket? Huge storage systems are available today supporting large numbers of disks, allowing the creation of massive storage resources. Storage Servers and storage enclosures suporting up to (60) 3.5″ disk drives are now common. Filling those bays with 6TB disks yields a system with 360TB raw capacity – one third of a petabyte! That is now an easy Continue reading Storage Sizing for Capacity and Performance