Does turning off the virtualization features make your CPU go faster for non-virtualized workloads?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Now if the only goal is speed, your priorities change. So if you really just care about how fast it can go, you look at things differently.
I see. I guess it makes sense at least w/ my limited knowledge of how it all works. If a single 850 Pro using system RAM as the write cache can pull off the numbers below on my home-made $1000 workstation ( over 4 GB/s read and write ), and my server has 256GB RAM for Storage Spaces to use, I imagine the hardware RAID wouldn't stand a chance. The risk of data loss is very scary though, and may end up being the deciding factor. Out of curiosity, were the data loss issues you saw pre Server 2012 era or post?
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The issues have mostly been around array failure. Either at run time or at reboot that the array simply fails and the array is lost with or without a drive failure. The software RAID equivalent of a DAC, I suppose. I have no doubt that Microsoft is putting tremendous effort into addressing traditional shortcomings and working to catch up to their decade-long lag versus Solaris and other platforms on this. But Storage Spaces is still nascent and needs time to prove its reliability because I will be comfortable recommending it given a twenty year history of problems with the product and some continuing reports of issues still.
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@creayt said:
What RAID level is giving you those numbers?
The 1:10 Sequential ratio seems really wrong.
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@MattSpeller said:
@creayt said:
What RAID level is giving you those numbers?
The 1:10 Sequential ratio seems really wrong.
That's literally a SINGLE 850 Pro 256 GB using the box's RAM as a write back cache ( Samsung's "rapid mode" ).
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@creayt ohhhhhhhhhhhhh ok - that was messing with my brain. thank you for clarification.
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@MattSpeller said:
@creayt ohhhhhhhhhhhhh ok - that was messing with my brain. thank you for clarification.
NP.
I should note in case it matters that it's a quad 3.8 Ghz Xeon w/ HT and 32 GB DDR3 1600.
My dual-core i7-5500U w/ 8GB of RAM puts these up w/ a single 840 Evo though, notice the awkwardly spectacular 6GB write.
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@creayt I'm going home to benchmark my (comparitively) budget build 8320 / 840pro
I don't think I have the software installed for the RAM drive boost thingy whatever - I should investigate that.
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@MattSpeller said:
@creayt I'm going home to benchmark my (comparitively) budget build 8320 / 840pro
I don't think I have the software installed for the RAM drive boost thingy whatever - I should investigate that.
What you want is Samsung Magician:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/support/downloads.htmlIt also lets you overprovision the drive while booted into Windows in a few clicks.
To get these ridic numbers I overprovision really hard, above 25%, FYI. Because it uses the system RAM as the cache ( I think you need at least 8 to even enable "rapid mode", but the more you have the better ).
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@creayt sweet, will investigate!
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Remember that the more RAM that you use as cache, the more data is potentially in flight during a power loss. If you have 128GB of RAM cache for your storage, that could be a tremendous amount of data that never makes it to the disk.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Remember that the more RAM that you use as cache, the more data is potentially in flight during a power loss. If you have 128GB of RAM cache for your storage, that could be a tremendous amount of data that never makes it to the disk.
So would your recommendation be "Storage Spaces aren't fit for production, always, always go hardware RAID if you're running a mission-critical database"?
And if so, given my hardware:
R620
10x 1TB 850 Pro SSDs
2x Xeon E5-2680 octos
256GB DDR 1600 ECCAnd my workload:
Single web app that's a hybrid between a personal to do app and a full enterprise project manager
IIS
Java-based app server
MySQL
MongoDB
Node JSWould your recommendation be to just go OBR10?
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Yes, OBR10 and hardware RAID would be my recommendation. Even if you sacrifice a little speed, the protection against failure is a bit better. I would sleep better with hardware RAID there.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Yes, OBR10 and hardware RAID would be my recommendation. Even if you sacrifice a little speed, the protection against failure is a bit better. I would sleep better with hardware RAID there.
Do you have any blog posts on what block size settings to use for web app/database mixed-load OBR10s? Or a favorite primer link you hand out to newbs?
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@creayt said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Yes, OBR10 and hardware RAID would be my recommendation. Even if you sacrifice a little speed, the protection against failure is a bit better. I would sleep better with hardware RAID there.
Do you have any blog posts on what block size settings to use for web app/database mixed-load OBR10s? Or a favorite primer link you hand out to newbs?
No, afraid not.
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I do not believe that turning off the virtualization capability of the processor via the BIOS will change the performance of the processor. My understanding of that ability to lock that down is simply that it is a security feature or a control feature, not a performance one.
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@Reid-Cooper said:
I do not believe that turning off the virtualization capability of the processor via the BIOS will change the performance of the processor. My understanding of that ability to lock that down is simply that it is a security feature or a control feature, not a performance one.
That's helpful, thanks. I guess I'll leave it on.
