Hi Guys, been going around in circles for weeks with this one and really need some help before I pull whats left of my hair out. So I bought a Supermicro X10DAL-i motherboard for a first server for my ne business (link = http://www.supermicro.com/products/mothe…00/x10dal-i.cfm). Great little budget board and I didnt really care that it had software only RAID becasue my gaming rig has a ASUS X99 Deluxe with software RAID and it works well with the RSTe SRT SSD cache mode on the RAID array (mainly just for storage).
Thinking I could do the same with this supermicro (why not?) I got myself 4 6TB seagate enterprise hdd’s and a 250GB evo 750 to use as the cache as without the ssd cache raid 5 performance on intel RAID is pretty rubbish performance wise. For the life of me I cant find a way to get the SSD caching or even the performace tab in RST(e) to show up! I have tried almost every driver that will allow install at this point and am out of ideas.
The motherboard has 2 RAID controllers (I assume both intel) a SATA and sSATA controller. I have the RAID on the SATA controller as it has 6 ports becasue I am asssuming the 4 m3mber disks and the ssd i intend to use as the cache need to be on the same controller? Does anyone have any idea what driver set / rst /s rste i need to acheive this? or is it simply not possible and should I give up and go buy a LSI megaraid on ebay?
Thanks in advance.
@AngryAnnunaki :
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!
The Intel Smart Response Technology has been designed some years ago, when >64 GB sized SSDs were very expensive, for systems with a normal sized HDD as system drive and an additional small sized SSD just for data caching to speed up the performance of the HDD.
Since you own a big sized SSD, it doesn’t make much sense to use the Intel Smart Response Technology. You will get a much better performance, if you would use the 250 GB SSD as system drive and your HDDs for data storage purposes (as non-RAID HDDs or as members of a RAID array).
If your mainboard has 2 separately working Intel SATA Controllers, it would be a good idea to run the SSD in AHCI mode and the HDDs in RAID mode.
For further details you may ask our Forum member 100PIER or any other user with an Intel C600+ Series Chipset system.
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)
Hi Fernando,
Thanks for your quick reply! I must apologise, I have actually messed up there, it is a 100GB EVO 750 I bought to use as an SSD cache, not a 250GB. I already have a 500GB EVO 850 that runs the Server OS and a virtual so no real need to use it as a dedicated drive. The reason I want this large RAID array to have some form of caching is it’s primary usage is for hosting and managing cloud backup files with Storagecraft Image Manager. It has a lot of reading/writing to do and I want to get some decent performance out of it. Currently I have been using the Intel C600+/C220 RSTe Drivers 3.x and 4.x and I am getting incredibly poor speeds from them. The disks are 4x Seagate NAS HDD (ST6000NV0021) in a RAID 5 and last benchmark I got in Crystal DiskMark was a read speed of only 10Mb/s in all 4 test results! This is with write caching enabled… I am struggling to get any better results and frankly a single disk gets much higher results! I have had this issue in the past with an older P6T-Deluxe V2 ASUS board, but then I thought that intel had since lifted their game becasue my newer X99 Deluxe ASUS board with intel RAID has much better results (343mb/s 40mb/s w/o ssd cache & 638mb/s 53mb/s with ssd cache). They are 3x much older 2TB disks and I was expecting to get a result at least above that from 4 7200rpm NAS drives from Seagate…
Is there something else I am doing majorly wrong here? I have no luck with Intel RAID. Would really appreciate your thoughts.
Did you check that SRT is supported by the Enterprise Drivers and OROM ? RST yes but RSTe ? I am not sure…
It’s working on my Asus X99A-II now (uses max 64gb of SSD) but at 1st my HDD array Disks were seen as SSDs in the Optimise/Defrag Util it was not till I installed Driver 12.9.4.1000 that the Disks were seen as HDDs and I could accelerate them. (At the moment any driver over 13.x.x.x does not work…) , hopefully you don’t have that issue too…
the thread about that issue…
Raid Array seen as SSDs Issue on Win10AU
Well, in the BIOS under Advanced it has the option to configure the RAID “Intel RSTe SATA Controller” display when you change sSATA to RAID so pretty sure it is RSTe…
My disks are dfinatley seen as disks not SSD’s in the RSTe software but cant say about in the optimise section because it is missing all together. The ssd is unpartitioned which should according to my experience should enable the ssd caching option under performance tab, but it just does not want to exist (the entire tab).
i am using the 3.X - 4.9 drivers as it is an Intel C612 chipset and not supported by the 12.x, 13.x etc drivers.
Interstingly enough in BIOS under the Intel RSTe SATA driver menu it says “4.3.0.1080” but I cant find any drivers for windows matching this version number…
Anyone?? Ideas Please?
By SRT I meant Intel Smart Response Technology or Intel SRT (Acceleration) not the RSTe version in the Bios.
Your MB is an Enterprise Level MB so it uses the RSTe OROM and Drivers in the 3 or 4 series , I just was not sure the Enterprise Level Boards can use SRT like the Consumer Boards.
Try initializing the SSD in windows , it does not matter if it had a partition or not , at least for me it just wiped it anyway after a warning I think, W10 won’t see the drive except in Disk Manangement otherwise , so perhaps RST can’t “see” it either ???
I also saw that for some Acceleration doesn’t enable if the GPT Disk is Formatted incorrectly and does not leave space for the GPT info
http://www.dell.com/support/article/ca/e…t1/SLN292995/en
from here
https://communities.intel.com/message/381123#381123
KB
hmm… Is SRT not just SSD caching itself? It is the section on the gaming rig that I created the SSD Cache for the other machine. This server is missing both that and the configure power and performance settings. Perhaps it is becasue the SSD I bought is 100GB and not under 64GB… ? All these terms… Intel really know how to make it confusing.
I went as far today as to do a complete rebuild of the server using only the drivers specified by the motherboard manufacturer… The results are hideous!
CrystalDiskMark:
SeqQ32T1: R:26.85 W:19.55 4KQ321: R:28.48 W:0.844 Seq: R:25.17 W:20.34 4K: R:8.772 W0.493 (MB/s)
It makes me want to cry… 4x Seagate enterprise level NAS drives should get so much higher than this. I have an old RocketRAID 2720 around that gets 10x these speeds, but it does not support ssd cache. I hate intel…they should just stick to making CPU’s. Maybe I should just buy a real LSI MegaRAID card and be done with it.
SRT is SSD Caching yes but I am not sure it is supported on Enterprise Chipsets (Server class boards) …I could find no reference to it… Ask Super Micro perhaps ,hopefully I am wrong , I was just wondering if that is why the option does not appear for you?.
By chance if you goto Tools> Optimise in the properties for the HDDs in the Array are they seen as HDD’s ? Mine are/were seen as SSD’s and I can’t accelerate the Array until I go back to version 12.9.4.1000 of the RST Drivers , then they are HDDs and the Performance Tab appears. ( any driver above 13.x causes this for me) unfortunately I don’t think you can use 12.9.4.1000 .