Fusion-IO ioDrive2 1.2tb - $240+$13 shipping

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HWGeek

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Sep 30, 2015
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Depends on which year you have, but in most cases, they are identical, just with different over-provisioning (which is user adjustable on all drives).

You can totally buy an ioScale, change the over-provisioning to the same as an iodrive and they will perform identical.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

Weird, I definitely get higher benchmarks with increasing the PCI-E power to 75W on my ioDrive 2 1.2TB. Not much, but noticeable.
 

acquacow

Well-Known Member
Feb 15, 2017
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The 1.2TB ioDrive 2s can use more than 25W on write. They write throttle unless you manually specify that your slot can support more than 25w. I think they max out somewhere around 30 or 35w at peak write.
 

sno.cn

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Sep 23, 2016
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Are the Nytro cards bootable? I have a couple of those on their way to me, as well.
no, Nytro cards are not bootable. They are called application Accelerator because of that.
The Nytro cards are certainly bootable. At least the F40 models I have are. Pop into the configuration menu during system boot, just like you would any other LSI card, and you can set boot options there.
 
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nk215

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Oct 6, 2015
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I stand corrected. I didn't remember seeing the bootable option before. It's clearly there.
 

lowfat

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Nov 25, 2016
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Anyone aware of any ZFS capable OS that FusionIO drives will work under? Would love to use one of my many drives as an SLOG and L2ARC but haven't had much luck finding an OS that supports them.
 

acquacow

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Feb 15, 2017
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They work just fine and have current driver support in RHEL/CentOS...
 

acquacow

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Feb 15, 2017
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I worked there for 6 years.

I can finally create a signature, so that should help.
 

nk215

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Oct 6, 2015
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Do you per chance work at FusionIO? You seem very well informed.
He really knows the fusion-io well. He helped me cross-flash an IBM-Duo with Sandisk firmware which has better driver support than IBM.
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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Is it possible to share on procedure to cross-flash IBM duo with Sandisk firmware?
Thanks
 

acquacow

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Feb 15, 2017
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There's really no cross-flashing, it's all the same firmware, there's just a file in the firmware with a list of product numbers and what firmware file they should consume. If your device product number isn't in the list, then you can't use that firmware... so you have to add your part number and define what firmware file should be used.

The firmware file is just a zip file... you just have to make sure you keep everything in the right format when you take it apart and put it back together.

I don't mind helping you on a one-on-one basis to keep a good product in use.
 
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BSDUNIX43

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Feb 22, 2017
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acquacow,

I have been looking into getting one of these to build a homelab SAN with a DellEMC UnityVSA VM. I have read reports where once you access this storage device over a network iSCSI or SMB the performance regardless of network speed 1 or 10gbps it does not perform well at all. Is there any merit to this statement? I understand the value in this devices original use case in enterprise as a local DB acceleration or ESX host cache.

Let me know if my question makes sense I would hate to waste $300+ on something that won't perform.

Thanks!
 

vBuild2BAU

Member
Feb 27, 2016
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There's really no cross-flashing, it's all the same firmware, there's just a file in the firmware with a list of product numbers and what firmware file they should consume. If your device product number isn't in the list, then you can't use that firmware... so you have to add your part number and define what firmware file should be used.

The firmware file is just a zip file... you just have to make sure you keep everything in the right format when you take it apart and put it back together.

I don't mind helping you on a one-on-one basis to keep a good product in use.
Two questions

1) Where do you find the device product number?
2) Which file needs to be edited to include the device product number?
 

acquacow

Well-Known Member
Feb 15, 2017
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acquacow,

I have been looking into getting one of these to build a homelab SAN with a DellEMC UnityVSA VM. I have read reports where once you access this storage device over a network iSCSI or SMB the performance regardless of network speed 1 or 10gbps it does not perform well at all. Is there any merit to this statement? I understand the value in this devices original use case in enterprise as a local DB acceleration or ESX host cache.

Let me know if my question makes sense I would hate to waste $300+ on something that won't perform.

Thanks!
I haven't experienced any performance degradation over network links, just the expected overhead added by those additional protocols. The whole point behind Fusion-io was to remove any and all layers that slow down the data path. Thats's why the cards don't use traditional disk controllers/etc. As soon as you slap a filesystem and network protocols on top of that, you will lose some performance. We always recommended using infiniband due to the much lower latency added on vs 10gigE, but there are some 10Gig cards out there now with really low latencies.

Performance also depends on the slot the card is installed into, and depends on if that slot is directly wired to the CPU, or behind an IOH or other pci-e switch of sorts. Then you have to make sure your slot can supply the needed power to reach peak write perf also.

One of the products I spent the most time selling and working with is ION, it was a shared storage platform. We'd load up a box with a bunch of ioDrives, then share it out over infiniband or fiber channel. Infiniband only added about 70us of latency, but FC added about 2-3x that on average. It was even worse if you went out over standard ethernet.

Two questions

1) Where do you find the device product number?
2) Which file needs to be edited to include the device product number?
The part number can be found in the output of "fio-status -a"
The firmware has an INFO file inside of it that details all the part numbers and what firmware bin file should be used.
You need to be on a 2.3.1x firmware before upgrading to 3.x, there is an upgrade path in the release notes.
The upgrade from 2.x to 3.x is also destructive as the drive layout changes due to added features like adaptive flashback, so you'll want to backup your data.
 

Oscaru

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Mar 3, 2017
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Hello,

I bought 2 of these cards 3 weeks ago from this seller. I just had time to install them this week, but have not been able to make them work.
I have tried them both on 2 different HPe DL380P Gen8 Servers, but none of them gets recognised even by the HP Bios. I have tried them on different PCIe slots and risers, and the Bios and iLO reports the slots like empty. The red led on the cards turns on, so that's why I know cards are well seated and installed correctly on the slots.
I can't even check which FW version they carry, since they are not recognised by the servers. Unfortunately I don't have any other machines to test with.
I am thinking on contacting the seller to return them if I can't make them work.
Any help or tip, before contacting the seller, will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
 

lowfat

Active Member
Nov 25, 2016
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What OS are you using? These cards are not bootable so you will not see them being listed as a drive in the bios.
 

Oscaru

New Member
Mar 3, 2017
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Hello lowfat, thanks for your reply
Fusion-Io IoDrive 2 cards are not bootable as far as I know.
The OS I am using is Windows Server 2012 R2. I've also tried VMware ESXi 6.0 u2 and 6.5. Neither of them recognised the cards. Any OS will not detect the card if the Bios doesn't detect them. PCIe slots appear as empty.
 

acquacow

Well-Known Member
Feb 15, 2017
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Have you installed the latest VSL drivers so that you can run fio-status?

What does the output of "fio-status -a" tell you?

If you don't install the Fusion-io drivers, you will not be able to see the cards in your system.
If your drivers don't match your firmware, you will not be able to attach the cards to your system and use them as drives.

If only the red LED is on, that means the card is powered, but the driver is not loaded.
 
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Oscaru

New Member
Mar 3, 2017
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Hi Acquacow,

I have already tried it, this is the output:

C:\Users\Administrator>fio-status -a
fio-status requires the driver to be loaded on this platform. Exiting.

As I said, the driver doesn't load since the OS doesn't detect there is a ioDrive installed, since even the bios doesn't recognised it installed.
 

lowfat

Active Member
Nov 25, 2016
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I don't think it has anything to do w/ the boards bios. The FusionIO cards do not have a bios installed on them. They do not initialize @ POST.

Can you try a different system and see if the cards are recognizable?