Posted by on Jan 6 2013 in • • • I'm the guy that likes to abuse my RAID arrays, described and. So this success with CacheCade Pro 2.0 is that much sweeter, even if it took about a year and a half to fully bake. This project, which inspired me to start this web site on June 1 2011 in the first place, was in jeopardy of having a failed storage strategy. Without CCPro2 for SSD caching of my 5.6TB RAID5 array, I could obtain similar speeds at a much lower price than my LSI 9265-8i. But victory at last achieved last night, with initial tests indicating a favorable outcome.

LSI00290 CacheCade Pro 2.0 with FastPath and physical key is now at Amazon here. You too can give can CacheCade Pro 2.0 / FastPath a 30 day trial right now, by following these 3 steps: a) buy SSD(s), attach to available SATA connection(s) on your LSI RAID adapter (see item #4 below) b) update to. MegaRAID FastPath Software - physical key LSI MegaRAID FastPath software provides high-performance I/O acceleration for SSDs connected to a 6Gb/s MegaRAID SATA+SAS controller, to dramatically boost transactional application throughput. Compatible with 9265-8i, 9285-8e. Part #: LSI00289,LSI00289 / FastPath.

Stay with me here to the end of this saga, where you'll see some initial benchmark tests, and rather impressive results! I've had the LSI 9265-8i RAID controller since the summer of 2011, with the promise of having excellent read and write speeds for my RAID5 array, explained here: Good RAID Controllers with SSD caching and ESX support Aug 13, 2011 07:14 pm I soon decided to return my 9260-8i, going instead with the RAID5 CacheCade Pro 2. Let`s Explore The Jungle With Buzzy there. 0 capable 9265-8i. Only that model supported RAID5 read+write caching: Z68 Sandybridge Motherboard VT-d Test Matrix: Which Mobo/CPU combo works with VMware ESXi 4.1U1 VMDirectPath feature?

Jul 14, 2011 06:56 pm By December, I had fully baked my storage strategy, and published it at: The reasoning behind vZilla’s storage configuration Dec 05, 2011 09:27 pm Basically, I'd format the entire internal RAID5 array as one big 5.6TB VMFS storage device in ESXi 5. I'd then put my VMs on that array, which would hopefully perform quite well, especially upon performing procedures the 2nd and 3rd time (for caching effects to start helping). By May, the prequisite hardware key and firmware to support CacheCade Pro 2.0 finally arrive: LSI CacheCade Pro 2.0 / FastPath FAQ has arrived, and so have the 30 day trial keys!

May 02, 2012 10:59 pm But then I had a nasty scrape with losing my array with an early firmware, and a entirely unsupported OCZ Vertex 4 (so this 'loss' was entirely my own fault): Playing with LSI CacheCade Pro 2.0: The OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD (VTX4-25SAT3-256G) (Caution!) May 03, 2012 01:33 am The actual RAID array drop can be seen in this newly published video, which is just a first-stab attempt at establishing whether my read and write speeds are now in the right ball-park. Only non-critical VMs that were left running at the time of the failure were affected, all other data on the array was unaffected by this incident. I also need to emphasize that the OCZ Vertex is still not on the CC Pro SSD compatibility list from Dec 2012 found on the Resources tab, with the details on pages 26 to 29:, Dec 13 2013 Worse yet, I had a problem with later firmwares and tests with my Samsung 830 256GB SSD.