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    How to tell if your hardware is compatible w/ I/O Acceleration Technology

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    • creaytC
      creayt
      last edited by creayt

      Have a Dell R620, the bios on which supports a feature called "i/oat dma engine", which a quick Google revealed that some people had claimed made a huge performance difference but *in order to work required that your full stack was Intel/compatible, not just your motherboard.

      Have any of you used this? Do you know how I'd tell whether my R620 fully supports it?

      From Wikipedia
      I/O Acceleration Technology (I/OAT) is a DMA engine (an embedded DMA controller) by Intel bundled with high-end server motherboards, that offloads memory copies from the main processor by performing direct memory accesses (DMA). It is typically used for accelerating network traffic, but supports any kind of copies.
      Using I/OAT for network acceleration is supported by Microsoft Windows since the release of Scalable Networking Pack for Windows Server 2003 SP1.[1] It was used by the Linux kernel starting in 2006[2] but this feature was subsequently disabled due to the possibility of data corruption.[3]

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • MattSpellerM
        MattSpeller
        last edited by MattSpeller

        I searched through it's data sheet, I see a few related things. I think it's to do with the H700 1GB supporting SSD cache??

        http://i.dell.com/sites/content/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/dell-poweredge-r620-technical-guide.pdf

        "Storage controllers
        Dell provides highly capable RAID options for you to ensure that your data remains safe. Dell’s RAID
        controller options offer impressive performance improvements, including the following features:
         FastPath™ I/O: This feature can help accelerate performance when operating on SSDs. "

        creaytC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • MattSpellerM
          MattSpeller
          last edited by MattSpeller

          H700 datasheet:
          https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/perc-technical-guidebook.pdf

          "4.2 CacheCade
          CacheCade provides cost-effective performance scaling for database-type application profiles in a
          host-based RAID environment by extending the PERC RAID controller cache with the addition of Dellqualified
          Enterprise SSDs.
          CacheCade identifies frequently-accessed areas within a data set and copies this data to a Dellqualified,
          Enterprise SSD (SATA or SAS), enabling faster response time by directing popular Random
          Read queries to the CacheCade SSD instead of to the underlying HDD.
          Supporting up to 512 GB of extended cache, CacheCade SSDs must all be the same interface (SATA or
          SAS) and will be contained in the server or storage enclosure where the RAID array resides.
          CacheCade SSDs will not be a part of the RAID array.
          CacheCade is a standard feature on, and only available with, the PERC H700/H800 1 GB NV Cache
          RAID controller.
          CacheCade SSDs can be configured using the PERC BIOS Configuration Utility or OpenManage."

          Edit, also this:

          4.3 Cut-Through IO
          Cut-through IO (CTIO) is an IO accelerator for SSD arrays that boosts the throughput of devices
          connected to the PERC Controller. It is enabled through disabling the write-back cache (enable
          write-through cache) and disabling Read Ahead.

          creaytC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • creaytC
            creayt @MattSpeller
            last edited by creayt

            @MattSpeller said:

            I searched through it's data sheet, I see a few related things. I think it's to do with the H700 1GB supporting SSD cache??

            http://i.dell.com/sites/content/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/dell-poweredge-r620-technical-guide.pdf

            "Storage controllers
            Dell provides highly capable RAID options for you to ensure that your data remains safe. Dell’s RAID
            controller options offer impressive performance improvements, including the following features:
             FastPath™ I/O: This feature can help accelerate performance when operating on SSDs. "

            Interesting. I know this server has a technology called CacheCade which is where you run mostly HDDS and then throw a single SSD into the mix up to 512GB which it can use as a cache similar to how hybrids/FusionDrives work. Thanks for the info.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • creaytC
              creayt @MattSpeller
              last edited by

              @MattSpeller said:

              H700 datasheet:
              https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/perc-technical-guidebook.pdf

              "4.2 CacheCade
              CacheCade provides cost-effective performance scaling for database-type application profiles in a
              host-based RAID environment by extending the PERC RAID controller cache with the addition of Dellqualified
              Enterprise SSDs.
              CacheCade identifies frequently-accessed areas within a data set and copies this data to a Dellqualified,
              Enterprise SSD (SATA or SAS), enabling faster response time by directing popular Random
              Read queries to the CacheCade SSD instead of to the underlying HDD.
              Supporting up to 512 GB of extended cache, CacheCade SSDs must all be the same interface (SATA or
              SAS) and will be contained in the server or storage enclosure where the RAID array resides.
              CacheCade SSDs will not be a part of the RAID array.
              CacheCade is a standard feature on, and only available with, the PERC H700/H800 1 GB NV Cache
              RAID controller.
              CacheCade SSDs can be configured using the PERC BIOS Configuration Utility or OpenManage."

              Sorry, posted that before this popped in.

              MattSpellerM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • MattSpellerM
                MattSpeller @creayt
                last edited by

                @creayt great minds etc

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • creaytC
                  creayt
                  last edited by

                  Kind of leads into another question, which is, if I'm running 100% high-performance SSDs, should I go ahead and turn off the cache of the Raid controller itself? I guess I could benchmark it with and without.

                  MattSpellerM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • MattSpellerM
                    MattSpeller @creayt
                    last edited by

                    @creayt said:

                    Kind of leads into another question, which is, if I'm running 100% high-performance SSDs, should I go ahead and turn off the cache of the Raid controller itself? I guess I could benchmark it with and without.

                    Even if there was an answer out there already to this, I'd still encourage you to do it and post more benchmark porn.

                    creaytC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • creaytC
                      creayt @MattSpeller
                      last edited by

                      @MattSpeller said:

                      Even if there was an answer out there already to this, I'd still encourage you to do it and post more benchmark porn.

                      cacheOnOff.png

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • creaytC
                        creayt
                        last edited by

                        Overall, super disappointing write performance. 😞

                        It's possible that the RAID-level underprovisioning does nothing. Really, really wish Rapid Mode worked across more than one drive, it'd be the perfect solution for use cases like this.

                        MattSpellerM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • MattSpellerM
                          MattSpeller @creayt
                          last edited by

                          @creayt

                          /me drools uncontrollably

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • R
                            rjt
                            last edited by rjt

                            In the Dell r720 "Lifecycle Controller" --> "System BIOS Settings" --> "Integrated Devices" sub section, both default to disabled:

                            • "i/oat dma engine" defaults to disabled

                            • "SR-IOV Global Enable" defaults to disabled

                            Hoping "i/oat dma engine" enables Remote DMA or RDMA over ConvergedEthernet or RoCE for hyperconverged storage. Thoughts?

                            If running xcp-ng, would you turn both of these on nowadays or just the SR-IOV "Virtualization Mode" in the "Integrated NICs" of "Device Level Configuration"?

                            cea0f490-d81e-4a8a-8d7c-8a5241476642-image.png

                            notverypunnyN 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • notverypunnyN
                              notverypunny @rjt
                              last edited by

                              @rjt said in How to tell if your hardware is compatible w/ I/O Acceleration Technology:

                              In the Dell r720 "Lifecycle Controller" --> "System BIOS Settings" --> "Integrated Devices" sub section, both default to disabled:

                              • "i/oat dma engine" defaults to disabled

                              • "SR-IOV Global Enable" defaults to disabled

                              Hoping "i/oat dma engine" enables Remote DMA or RDMA over ConvergedEthernet or RoCE for hyperconverged storage. Thoughts?

                              If running xcp-ng, would you turn both of these on nowadays or just the SR-IOV "Virtualization Mode" in the "Integrated NICs" of "Device Level Configuration"?

                              cea0f490-d81e-4a8a-8d7c-8a5241476642-image.png

                              AFAIK neither will enable RDMA / RoCE. SR-IOV requires that the NICs and hypervisor be compatible, it basically splits up a physical NIC into x number of virtual NICs that do a real HW passthrough to the assigned guests.

                              FWIW, IOAT DMA appears to have been depreciated in Linux and Windows according to it's Wikipedia entry

                              R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • R
                                rjt @notverypunny
                                last edited by

                                @notverypunny, had some wishful thinking after seeing references to netDMA and Andy Grover, the developer of the iSCSi targetcli freebranch and now stratis who posted all the benchmarks and papers on ioat, and speeding up iSCSi type IO using RDMA / RoCE between Hypervisors is my goal. But then could not find Andy Grovers actual ioat patches or benchmarks to look for myself - 404s.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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