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 issues and errata that were discovered after
completion of the standard product documentation. In the case of conflict between various parts of the
documentation set, this file contains the most current 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
controllers:
the following Adaptec RAID
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
o Windows Drivers
o Linux Drivers
o Adaptec Storage Mgr
: 5.2.0 - B16910
:
5.2.0 - B16907
: 1.1.5 - 2467
: 6.10 - B15530
1.3 Supported Operating Systems:
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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 Guide contains complete installation
information for the controllers and 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
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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
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The firmware will expire in 60 days, so it is suggested not to use this 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 the ITP pool.
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The code you are receiving is going through a development cycle and is given to you "as-is"
basis. It has not gone through any formal test cycle and it is given to you for evaluation purposes
only. So please do not deploy the code in a production environment.
The maximum number of SSDs supported in the ITP feature is set to 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 OS instead of a pressing the
reboot button or pulling the power. If the system is not properly shutdown, the cache data gets
invalid and 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
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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 known issues are being addressed or will
be addressed when the product development is complete.
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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
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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 its licensors. The software is protected
under international copyright laws and treaties. This software may only be used in accordance with
the terms of its accompanying license agreement.
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consent of Adaptec GmbH., Lise-Meitner-Strasse 7, Ismaning, Germany