Fusion Iodrive2

[Deci]

Does anyone have the software/drivers for windows x64 for the iodrive 2? i have had a bit of a look around with google but everything points back to the fusion io site and they require a support agreement to download anything to do with the iodrive2.

I picked one up second hand and am trying to test/check out how used it is and i managed to get the 3.2.8 driver and 3.7.0 management software, but it is complaining that the firmware on the drive (7.0.2 (108609)) is too old for the driver i have ("The ioMemory is currently running in a minimal state. The firmware on this device is not compatible with the currently installed version of the driver.")

Alternatively, is anyone aware of a better way to go about getting its usage stats from the device? at the moment its only saying the model/SN and almost everything else is listed as "Unavaliable"

 

[Hank C]

Hi @Deci I also have the same thing! I got the IBM OEM iodrive2 which no one has the driver/firmware for it. do you have the exact card?

 

[mrkrad]

Yeah you pretty much have to have a contract to get your licensed drivers/firmware from FusionIO - which is why i never bought into their product. Plus the older iodrive's overheated and clocked themselves down in HP G7 servers

 

[Deci]

@Hank C the one i got appears to be a non 3rd party card, looks exactly like the ones on the fusionio website and the sticker on it from memory was just the fusionio/made in usa/model one, i can check tomorrow in more detail.

I guess i can run up an openindiana/omnios install and put it in there to test it as that should have drivers built in but i dont believe i can view the usage info etc that way unless there is a package i can install for it thats public?

@mrkrad the older model had a much smaller heatsink, just sitting ilde this one was reporting 50c with a fan directed at it (just sitting in a desktop machine)

 

[Deci]

I did some more looking around, the version of firmware on the card equates to somewhere between 3.1.x and 3.2.1 which means it doesnt work with any of the drivers after 3.2.1 as they made changes within it that breaks support for earlier firmware, i installed openindiana and it detects that the drive is there, but does not list it as a storage device. i am in the process of getting solaris 10 as the fusion website says that supports every revision of firmware post 2.x - latest and solaris 11 supports from version 3.2.2 onwards.

Fusions response when asked was basically you didnt buy it initially so go away we dont care, wouldnt even consider a paid incident support option which i offered, i didnt go into it expecting them to support it for free though i dont see why they cant have versions 2 or so years old released without support contracts, 3.2.3 is from 05-06-13.

In my looking around if you want firmware files and drivers the best option is to get the DELL oem versions as their drivers/firmware are actually accessible.

 

[Deci]

@Hank C does your IBM card have any physical differences to the direct from fusion io version? do you know what firmware is on yours?

Fusion-io Driver for Windows 7 (64-bit), Windows 8.1 (64-bit) - ThinkStation P500, P700 and P900 - Lenovo Support (US) - it extracts all the files to C:\SWTOOLS\DRIVERS\FussionIO\ghssd03ws14_driver (contains management software and driver, both seperate installs but requires the card firmware be above the level mine is on 7.1.3 or something, its so close to being a version that works its just stupid.)

this has the 3.2.8 software and it installs the driver for my card even though it isnt a lenovo one, the dell driver also installs, i was able to get the dell firmware 3.2.3-3.2.8 are avaliable to be downloaded ( Fusion-io Dell ioMemory VSL ) but would flashing to the dell firmware brick it?

 

[Deci]

http://i.imgur.com/9JTZd0M.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/mjOG4jS.jpg

 

[neeyuese]

Download link :

Workstations :: ThinkStation P Series workstations :: ThinkStation P500 - Lenovo Support (US)

IBM High IOPS Adapters Matrix

Fusion-io Dell ioMemory VSL

 

[Deci]

physically the OEM cards look identical save for the stickers.

i have the DELL, HP and IBM firmware/driver files, but no non rebranded files, the IBM firmware is the smallest at 31.2MB, the DELL firmware is 80MB and the HP firmware comes in at a hefty 133MB.

 

[Deci]

so, after a lot of begging and pleading around i have managed to get a copy of the non rebranded firmware for the drive and its configured and working, just as a test to see what happens when its provisioned down to the size its going to be operating at, you get the following performance from it (no preconditioning)

 

[Hank C]

do you mind share both non brand and ibm drivers? prefer all versions of firmware/drivers

 

[Deci]

The post by @neeyuese has the branded firmware/drivers, any of the branded windows drivers work for windows as do the configuration utility, the IBM link has drivers and firmware for SUSE, Redhat, VMware and Windows.

The only non branded driver i have currently is for redhat/centos, i am waiting on the solaris driver and they (the person who supplied the firmware) wont be back into the office until monday to have a look as the OEM sites dont appear to list the solaris driver but i imagine its the same deal as windows, the driver itself will work even if its not that brand of card i had my drive talking with the Dell, IBM and HP drivers under windows and the firmware update was done with the IBM driver and setup using the HP branded iosphere management software because thats what i had installed at the time.

I had the HP links somewhere, i may still have the tab open and will take a look.

 

[Deci]

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/...55928437f9d17c84913&swEnvOid=4168#tab-history

Thats the link to the HP versions, if you go to the revision history you can go back as far as 3.1.1

 

[Deci]

Found the HP drivers while googling, havent heard back about the non OEM drivers as yet.

Drivers & Software for HP 365GB Multi Level Cell G2 PCIe Solid State Drive IO Accelerator - HP Support Center.

I can confirm the HP 3.2.6 driver works with the 3.2.8 firmware i have under solaris
Detached it, formated it down to 40GB and then re attached it.

Under openindiana 151a8

i wouldnt take those numbers to be properly indicative of performance under solaris as its a core2duo with 2gb ram and pci-e v1.0, the crystal disk mark results were on a much newer system.

 

[Deci]

To add to this, i picked up a 320gb iodrive Duo (SLC) and in the same system as the previous crystal disk mark benches they gave the following results, the raid0 is just a software stripe under win8.1. the drive appears to have simply been spare/old stock as it had under 1GB written to each drive before i started doing anything with it, the firmware was on v3 (had to go v5.xxx (2.3.10) to v7.xxx (3.2.8)) to get it running.

Single drive.

Dual drives in raid0

The MLC iodrive2 appears to have a reasonably significant increase in performance over the older drives in 4k low/high QD. if it was SLC vs SLC the iodrive2 would have been even further infront.

 

[Ninjawolf3]

So i have a fusion iodrive2 as well and cant get it to work on windows 7. I have been able to get apk from lenovo to work but i cant get the damn thing to update the drivers. When i check the status it says firmware version installed isnt compatible with the drivers. Help please

 

[Deci]

the error tells you everything.

the fusion io drives basically need to have the driver version match the firmware version or be very close to it as they are very software dependent, you cant have old firmware with new drivers or new firmware with old drivers.

you can use the management tools to see what version of firmware is installed on the drive, or fio-status -a

 

[lowfat]

To add to this, i picked up a 320gb iodrive Duo (SLC) and in the same system as the previous crystal disk mark benches they gave the following results, the raid0 is just a software stripe under win8.1. the drive appears to have simply been spare/old stock as it had under 1GB written to each drive before i started doing anything with it, the firmware was on v3 (had to go v5.xxx (2.3.10) to v7.xxx (3.2.8)) to get it running.

Single drive.

Dual drives in raid0

The MLC iodrive2 appears to have a reasonably significant increase in performance over the older drives in 4k low/high QD. if it was SLC vs SLC the iodrive2 would have been even further infront.

My ioDrive Duo 320GB SLC is significantly faster than my 1.2TB ioScale (ioDrive 2).

Overprovisioned ioScale

ioDrive Duo

Overprovisioned ioScale

ioDrive Duo

Only @ 4K QD1 writes does the ioScale (ioDrive 2) pull ahead. Which doesn't matter to me since I use a ram cache.

 

[acquacow]

Yeah, the SLC modules are a bit faster than MLC, most are because there's less voltage checking needed to determine the bit value of the cell.

The original SLC ioDrives were rated at 770MB/sec read, 750MB/sec write. That gets you to ~1.5GB/sec read/write in the Duo when striped.
The same drive with MLC was rated at 735MB/sec read, 510MB/sec write.



The ioDrive 2 (identical to the ioScale 2) is rated at 1.5GB/sec read, 1.3GB/sec write (for the 1.2TB).

 

[Deci]

all that testing was done a while ago too, and a lot of it wasn't on the greatest systems even then, but both drives are still kicking along flawlessly in storage boxes though.

would have been nice to have been able to get the 1.2tb iodrive 2 for a decent price, but this was all done nearly 2 years ago, the drivers\firmware were all locked down under service contracts and i ended up finding a friend of a friend that could get them for me.