Install and use of ITP

This document describes the basic software installation and limitations

of the Intelligent Tiered Provisioning (ITP) feature supported by the

Adaptec RAID Controllers.

Date: 14 July 2009

Revision: 6.1

Please review this file for important information about issuesand errata that were discovered after completion of the standardproduct documentation. In the case of conflict between variousparts of the documentation set, this file contains the mostcurrent information.

Contend of this file:

1. General Information

1.1 Supported Controllers

1.2 Software & Firmware versions

1.3 Supported Windows OS

1.4 Supported SSDs

2. Installation and Setup

2.1 Installation Instructions

2.2 ITP setup

3. General Cautions

4. Known Limitations

5. Known limitations

6. Recommendations for testing

1. Software & Firmware Versions

1.1 Supported Controllers

The Firmware and Software listed in the next section will support only the following Adaptec RAID controllers:

o ASR 5405

o ASR 5085

o ASR 5805

o ASR 5445

o ASR 51245

o ASR 51645

o ASR 52445

Note: For this beta it is recommended to use a Series-5 card with 512MB Dram Cache (all but 5405)

1.2 Software Version:

o FW version : 5.2.0 - B16910

o Windows Drivers: 5.2.0 - B16907

o Linux Drivers: 1.1.5 - 2467

o Adaptec Storage Mgr : 6.10 - B15530

1.3 Supported Operating Systems:

  • Windows 2003 Server, Enterprise, Standard (32-bit, 64-bit)
  • Windows 2008 Server, Enterprise, Standard (32-bit, 64-bit)
  • Windows XP All versions
  • Windows Vista All versions
  • Linux - RHEL 5.x, SuSE 10.x, Kernels 2.6.x

1.4 Supported SSDs:

o Adaptec Intel SLC SSD X-25E (comes with the demo package). Note that at this stage no other SSDs are supported for ITP other than the one that is shipped with the beta package

2. Installation and Setup

2.1 Installation Instructions

The Adaptec SAS RAID Controllers Installation and User's Guidecontains complete installation information for the controllersand drivers, as well as complete instructions for all utilities. The Adaptec Storage Manager User's Guide contains complete installation information for the Adaptec Storage Manager software.

2.2 Intelligent Tiered Provisioning Setup

Once the controller firmware is updated to the firmware version

listed in the section 1.2, please follow the instructions for

setting up the Intelligent Tiered Provisioning (ITP) feature.

* The ITP feature can be now enabled or disabled from the Adaptec

Storage Manager software and from the BIOS Ctrl-A Utility.

* Enable the Read and Write array caches during the array creation

Installation Steps:

  • Install Controller Firmware, device drivers and Adaptec Storage Manager as outlined in the user manual. Use the drivers, ASM and firmware files that are shipped with the ITP beta package
  • Shut down the system and attach the SSD drive provided by Adaptec to the controller (note that the SSD can be plugged to one of the regular SATA/SAS ports of the controller. It can also be inserted into an appropriate 2.5” drive carrier and/or into an appropriate backplane for SFF drive if available. Also connect the HDD drives you want to use for testing
  • Start Adaptec Storage manager and Initialize the SSD (right click on SSD in ASM and choose initialize
  • Right click on SSD and choose “Add to ITP Pool”. This step makes the SSD a part of the ITP caching pool (without this step, the SSD might be used as a storage device like any HDD)
  • Create your HDD RAID arrays
  • Right click on the RAID array and choose “Configure ITP” then “Enable ITP” to enable SSD Caching (ITP) for any available RAID Storage Array

3. General Cautions

  • The firmware will expire in 60 days, so it is suggested not to usethis code in a production environment.
  • Use only the drives that are provided by Adaptec. The Intel X25E drives obtained from other vendors will not be available for theITP pool.
  • The code you are receiving is going through a development cycleand is given to you "as-is" basis. It has not gone through anyformal test cycle and it is given to you for evaluation purposesonly. So please do not deploy the code in a production environment.
  • The maximum number of SSDs supported in the ITP feature is setto 4.
  • The cache needs to be full in order to provide optimum performance.The cache fill logic in the firmware is adaptive and will take Some time to fill up the cache depending on the work load (could be minutes to several hours).
  • Always perform a clean shutdown, ie, properly shutting down the OSinstead of a pressing the reboot button or pulling the power. If the system is not properly shutdown, the cache data gets invalidand the firmware starts filling up the cache again. This results in temporary loss of the performance boost until the cache is rebuilt.

4. Latest improvements

  • Automatic statistics printouts every 10 minutes to log To transport ITP-related statistics during in-field beta tests, ITP does periodical statistics printouts to UART every 10 minutes (equal to UART "rrcstats", no counter reset).
  • At the end of the log, the phonehome data and "getstats" printouts are included. This data can be collected and transported back to us through the support.zip functionality. Beta test customers should be asked to return a support.zip that was created after an ITP test, before a reboot, as part of their feedback. This data will give us an idea of the IO load and ITP efficiency in a customer's application.
  • Automatic ITP cache fill, if the ITP container space <= ITP SSD cache size If the ITP-enabled container space is smaller or equal in size compared to the available ITP SSD cache space when an ITP pool is configured, the ITP cache will be filled by the background fetch task.
  • This is done on all ITP enabled containers in parallel. So if an ITP pool is configured and it is larger than the ITP-enabled container space, a background ITP cache fetch will run across the full ITP enabled container space, pre-filling the SSD cache. It's important to setup the ITP pool after configuring the container to make use of this feature.
  • Supports more than one SSD in the ITP pool

New features:

  • if SSD same size then RAID, all data will be merged into SSD
  • recommend to use card 512 MB Series-5 card

5. Known Limitations

The following section lists out the known limitations. These knownissues are being addressed or will be addressed when the productdevelopment is complete.

  • no RAID10, RAID 50 and RAID60 support for ITP in this beta release
  • limited error handling for failed SSDs (do not fail or unplug SSD during your testing with this beta)
  • Only Linux and Windows drivers are delivered with this relase (no support for other OSes)
  • As described in the previous section, this controller firmware will expire in 60 days.

6. Recommendations for testing

  • Please have a look at the “Feedback sheet” and “How it works” documents to learn more about the recommended way of testing
  • Please create a support.zip package, ideally after setting up ITP and running tests, but before a reboot. A support.zip package can be created through ASM (right-click on local system -> "Save support archive"). Without this archive, we will have little to no information about the actual IO load and ITP cache usage.

(c) 2009 Adaptec, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This software contains the valuable trade secrets of Adaptec or itslicensors. The software is protected under international copyrightlaws and treaties. This software may only be used in accordance with

the terms of its accompanying license agreement.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written consent of Adaptec GmbH., Lise-Meitner-Strasse 7, Ismaning, Germany