Graid vs softraid
Not every workload will be easy sequential reads of course, but the point remains. Even accounting for spec sheet vs reality difference, in this workload, that means two SSDs will cap a traditional RAID card in this particular workload. A mainstream enterprise SSD like the Intel P5510 for instance can crank out 7000MB/s sequential read bandwidth.
A server with a Gen4 PCIe slot can only hope to attain 16GB/s out of a x8 slot or 32GB/s out of a x16 slot.īut RAID cards are generally of the x8 variety, which means to leverage even moderate pools of NVMe flash in a single server, you’re looking at multiple RAID cards. It’s not that the RAID cards themselves don’t work, it’s simply an issue of math. Now that NVMe SSDs are so fast, hardware RAID is a limiting factor. Traditional hardware RAID cards have worked well, up to a point. What’s Wrong with Traditional NVMe RAID Cards? You see, GRAID SupremeRAID doesn’t use a legacy RAID card it uses a GPU to get the job done. GRAID is significantly different, thanks to an entirely novel architecture. GRAID SupremeRAID, so the claim goes, is “the world’s first NVMe RAID card to deliver 100% available SSD performance.” The little bit of marketing aside, GRAID does hit at a very real issue, traditional RAID cards can’t deliver all of the performance modern SSDs have to offer. GRAID Technology launched its first product over the summer, designed to handle modern throughput challenges that have been introduced by NVMe SSDs.