Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 12
Download PDFWed, 10 May 2023 17:18:18 -0000
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Summary
Dell Technologies’ newest RAID controller iteration, PERC 12, which is using the new Broadcom SAS4116W series chip, has increased support capabilities, including 24 Gbps SAS drives, increased cache memory speed to 3200 Mhz, 16-lane host bus type, and, most notably, only one front controller that supports both NVMe and SAS.
PERC 12 card management applications include Comprehensive Embedded Management (CEM), Dell OpenManage Storage Management, The Human Interface Infrastructure (HII) configuration utility, and the PERC command line interface (CLI). These applications enable you to manage and configure the RAID system, create and manage multiple disk groups, control and monitor multiple RAID systems, and provide online maintenance.
Introduction
As storage demands expand and processing loads grow, RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) data protection has become a necessary staple for proper enterprise storage management. Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) provides a RAID solution that is powerful and easy-to-manage for enterprise storage data protection needs.
Dell Technologies’ newest RAID controller iteration, PERC 12, has increased support capabilities: 24 Gbps SAS drives, an increased cache memory speed of 3200 Mhz, 16-lane host bus type, and a single front controller that supports both NVMe and SAS.
PERC12 PowerEdge Support
H965i Adapter controller
PERC12 Adapter Card adds an Active Heat Sink (Fan) on the controller, providing additional cooling capabilities, to ensure that the controller is always running at optimum temperature and does not compromise on performance because of overheating. The controller connects directly on the motherboard using a PCIe slot and uses a SlimLine connector (or a NearStack connector) for the SAS/NVMe interfaces.
H965i Front controller
PERC12 Front Card upgrades the hardware design when compared to the previous generation controller. It combines SAS and NVMe support with a single card, eliminating the need to use different controllers for SAS and NVMe supported servers. The controller has a SlimLine connector (or a NearStack connector) for both PCIe and SAS/NVMe interfaces.
H965i MX controller
PERC12 MX Card is designed specifically for MX chassis servers and includes an energy pack similar to other form factors for power backup in case of power loss. This helps ensure proper customer cache offload to avoid any data loss. The controller connects directly on the motherboard using a PCIe slot and uses a SlimLine connector (or a NearStack connector) for the SAS/NVMe interfaces.
PERC 12 Supported Operating Systems
Windows Server
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Server 2022
Linux
- RHEL 8.6
- RHEL 9.0
- SLES 15 SP4
- Ubuntu 22.04
VMware
- ESXi 7.0 U3
- ESXi 8.0
See Dell Technologies Enterprise operating systems support for a list of supported operating systems by specific server for the PERC 12 cards.
Hardware RAID Performance
NVMe Key RAID Metrics (PERC11 / PERC12)
Table 1. Latency / Rebuild
Key NVMe RAID 5 Metrics (PERC11 / PERC12)
Table 2. IOPS / Bandwidth
Key SAS RAID Metrics (PERC10 / PERC11 / PERC12)
Table 3. IOPS / Latency Reduction During Rebuild
Key SAS RAID Metrics (PERC10 / PERC11 / PERC12)
Table 4. IOPS / Bandwidth
Conclusion
Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 12 or PERC 12 continues to innovate by supporting hardware RAID for NVMe drives. The PERC 12 series consists of PERC H965i Adapter, PERC H965i Front, and PERC H965i MX.
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Dell PowerEdge Boot Optimized Storage Solution – BOSS-N1
Fri, 27 Jan 2023 21:58:02 -0000
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Summary
Our latest generation HW RAID BOSS solution (BOSS-N1) incorporates NVMe Enterprise class M.2 NVMe SSDs. It includes important RAS features such as rear or front facing drives on our new rack servers and full hot-plug support, so a server does not need to be taken offline in case of an SSD failure. When operating a RAID 1 mirror, a surprise removal and addition of a new SSD automatically kicks off a rebuild on the new RAID 1 member SSD that was added, so there is no need to halt server operations.
Available on the newest generation of PowerEdge systems, BOSS-N1 provides a robust, redundant, low-cost solution for boot optimization.
Introduction
The Boot Optimized Storage Solution (BOSS-N1) provides key, generational feature improvements to the highly popular BOSS subsystem and its existing value proposition. It incorporates an NVMe interface to the M.2 SSDs to ensure high performance and the latest technology. BOSS was originally designed to provide a highly reliable, cost-effective solution for separating operating system boot drives from data drives on server-internal storage. Many customers, particularly those in the Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) arena and those implementing Software Defined Storage (SDS), require separating their OS drives from data drives. They also require hardware RAID mirroring (RAID 1) for their OS drives. The main motivation for this is to create a server configuration optimized for application data. Providing a separate, redundant disk solution for the OS enables a more robust and optimized compute platform.
Figure 1. Installing the BOSS-N1 monolithic controller module
The Boot Optimized Storage Solution (BOSS-N1) is a simple, highly reliable and cost-effective solution to meet the requirements of our customers. The NVMe M.2 devices offer similar performance as 2.5” SSDs and support rear or front facing drive accessibility with full hot-plug support on monolithic platforms and includes surprise removal. Our design frees up and maximizes available drive slots for data requirements.
BOSS-N1 provides a secure way of updating the controller firmware
- Each of the firmware components is authenticated before being stored to firmware slot
- Authentication requires the use of public and private asymmetric key pair. This protected key pair is uniquely generated for Dell through a hardware security module (HSM) server.
- BOSS-N1 firmware updates can be updated using DUP from both In-band (Operating System) and Out-of-band (iDRAC) interfaces
You can manage BOSS-N1 with standard well-known management tools such as iDRAC, OpenManage Systems Administrator (OMSA), and the BOSS-N1 Command Line Interface (CLI).
BOSS-N1 hardware components
Figure 2. BOSS-N1 monolithic card
Figure 3. BOSS-N1 modular
Key features of BOSS-N1:
- Supports one (1) or two (2) 80 mm M.2 Enterprise Class NVMe SSDs
- M.2 devices are read-intensive (1 DWPD) with 480GB or 960GB capacity
- Fixed function hardware RAID 1 (mirroring) or single drive RAID 0
- Rear or front facing module for quick and easy accessibility to the M.2 SSDs on monolithic platforms
- Full hot-plug support on monolithic platforms
- M.2 drive LED functionality on monolithic platforms
- Managing BOSS-N1 is accomplished with standard, well-known management tools such as iDRAC, OpenManage Systems Administrator (OMSA), and the BOSS-N1 Command Line Interface (CLI)
BOSS-N1 supported operating systems
Windows Servers
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Server 2022
Linux
- RHEL 8.6
- SLES 15 SP4
- Ubuntu 20.04.4
VMware
- ESXi 7.0 U3
- ESXi 8.0
References
- For more information about BOSS-N1, see the BOSS-N1 User’s Guide.
- For more information about iDRAC, such as the iDRAC User’s Guide and the iDRAC Release Notes, see the Dell Support site.
- For more information about OpenManage Server Administrator, see the OMSA 9.5 User’s Guide.
Apache Cassandra performance advantages of the new Dell PowerEdge C6620 with Dell PERC 12 RAID controller
Thu, 21 Sep 2023 23:14:16 -0000
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The PowerEdge C6620 with PERC 12 delivered lower latency and higher throughput than an HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 server with an HPE Smart Array P440ar controller
Overview
Today’s businesses both generate and take in enormous quantities of data as part of their daily operations. Smartphones, computers, servers, and the activities of people online are the sources of some of this data, but more and more of the data also come from a wide variety of other places, such as weather sensors, streaming video cameras, wearable devices, and onboard computers in vehicles, to name just a few examples. One estimate suggests that the number of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices will reach over 29 billion by 2030.1 With an ever-increasing mountain of data, much of it from non-traditional sources, organizations need a way to extract value from the noise. NoSQL database systems such as Apache Cassandra can help organizations store, process, and analyze this data to glean useful insights. To be most effective, however, the database system should run on a high-performing computing platform that can complete big data workloads quickly and get insights into decision makers’ hands fast. We assessed the ability of two platforms to handle Cassandra workloads. The first was the new Dell™ PowerEdge™ C6620 with Broadcom®-based Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) 12, which companies might choose if they’re upgrading to new servers to better handle their big data needs. The second was the older HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 server with an HPE Smart Array P440ar controller, which represents a server that organizations might already have in their data centers. The Dell and Broadcom solution provided higher throughput and lower latencies in our testing, meaning that it completed more big data work in the same amount of time as the older HPE solution. With a strong big data solution, businesses can put their data to work and use it to optimize processes, cut costs, improve customer experience, and grow their offerings. This report explores how and why running Apache Cassandra as a big data system on the Dell PowerEdge C6620 server with PERC 12 might be that solution for you.
About the Dell PowerEdge C6620 server Part of the Dell modular infrastructure PowerEdge C-Series, Dell says the PowerEdge C6620 is “designed for compute-intensive workloads” but also “ideal for IOPS-heavy workloads.”2 It features up to two 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, with up to 56 cores per processor; offers memory speeds of up to 4,800 MT/s; and supports up to 16 NVMe® drives for workload acceleration. Optional liquid cooling is also available.
To learn more about the Dell PowerEdge C6620, visit https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/ enterprise-products/c6620-two-socket-server-node-intel/spd/poweredge-c6620. |
Assessing Cassandra performance on the Dell PowerEdge C6620 with Broadcom-based PERC 12
Upgrading to new servers is a big decision. You know that newer, more modern technology is likely to offer performance improvements, but exactly what will those benefits look like, and how much more will the new systems be able to handle? Our testing quantifies the performance boost you might see on your Cassandra workloads by moving from HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 servers with Smart Array P440ar controllers to new Dell PowerEdge C6620 servers with Broadcom-based PERC 12.
Our configurations
For our test environment, we installed VMware® vSphere® 8 on both servers before configuring a separate infrastructure server with VMware ESXi™ and VMware vCenter®. We used this infrastructure server to manage the servers and to host client VMs that ran our test workload against our databases. The Dell PowerEdge C6620 server with PERC 12 used two Dell U2 Gen4 NVMe® 3.84TB drives. The HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 server with HPE Smart Array P440ar controller used six 960GB mixed-use SAS 12Gbps drives. Table 1 highlights more details of our configuration.
On each server, we created a Cassandra gold VM and cloned it five times to create a total of six VMs, which we joined in a cluster configuration. We then used the Yahoo Cloud Serving Benchmark (YCSB) to create a 100GB database across the six VMs to take advantage of the distributed database functionality of Cassandra, ran YCSB workload B for 30 minutes, and recorded the results. In the results we highlight below, we provide two perspectives on the performance of each setup: the total throughput and the average read and write latency. Both results reflect the performance across all six VMs.
Why YCSB?
YCSB is an industry-standard benchmark for NoSQL databases. In 2010, a group from Yahoo! Research created it with “the goal of facilitating performance comparisons of the new generation of cloud data serving systems.”3 It is open source, meaning that anyone can access and modify the source code. In a recent interview, contributors to the YCSB open-source community note that it “is rather largely accepted by users” and “represents a series of scenarios that can be abstracted from the real world.”4 Apache Cassandra was one of the first four databases that the YCSB creators tested with the benchmark in 2010, and YCSB remains a good fit for testing Cassandra performance today.5
YCSB functions by letting users create a database populated with synthetic data on their database system of choice. Users can then run a pre-defined or customized workload against the database to gauge system performance. YCSB offers six core workloads, each of which represents a different type of database work. Our testing used the read-intensive workload B. This workload is 95 percent reads (pulling data from a database) and 5 percent writes (adding to or changing data in a database). YCSB gives one application example as photo tagging, where a user might occasionally add a tag to a photo (write) but will mostly search a library of tagged photos (read).6 A solution that offers higher performance on YCSB workload B is likely to improve performance on other read-intensive workloads, such as data analysis. We chose this workload to focus on reading and analyzing a database.
Upgrade to the Dell PowerEdge C6620 with Broadcom-based PERC 12 for lower latencies and better throughput
In our testing with YCSB, the Dell PowerEdge C6620 with PERC 12 offered better performance on all three metrics we measured: read latency, update (or write) latency, and throughput (measured in operations per second). The improvements were significant, meaning that trading out your HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 servers for new PowerEdge C6620 servers could enable your organization to handle substantially more Cassandra work. The first metrics we examined were read latency, which measures the delay between the application requesting a piece of data and the database system delivering it, and update latency, which measures the delay between the application changing or adding a piece of data and the database system completing the action. The Dell PowerEdge C6620 with PERC 12 was much faster on both types of latency, with the largest advantage on update latency. There, it offered 60.2 percent lower—or 1.97 milliseconds less—latency than the HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 server with Smart Array P440ar controller. It may seem like a sub-two-millisecond delay is inconsequential; if you were loading a webpage or pulling up a video, you wouldn’t notice a two-millisecond difference. The significance of this advantage, however, is due to the enormous number of operations that the database system must perform before it can deliver usable results. For this testing in YCSB, we set the max execution time variable (or how long the benchmark should run) to 30 minutes. At a rate of 249,210 operations per second (see Figure 3), the Dell PowerEdge C6620 with Broadcom-based PERC 12 executed over 400 million operations during the 30-minute test. So, while a difference of one or two milliseconds might not mean much on a single operation, on 400 million operations, the benefit of the faster solution becomes clear.
About the Dell PERC 12 RAID controllerThe Dell PowerEdge C6620 we tested features the PERC 12, which offers a single front controller with full RAID support for both NVMe and SAS.7 It brings 3,200MHz cache memory speed and a 16-lane host bus type and supports RAID levels 0, 1, 56, 10, 50, and 60.8
The Dell PERC 12 is based on the Broadcom SAS4116W series chip. According to Broadcom, “this eighth- generation SAS RAID-on-Chip (ROC) is based on the industry-leading Fusion-MPT architecture and features Tri-Mode SerDes technology that enables a seamless operation of up to 16-wide direct-connect NVMe, SAS or SATA storage devices from any system design.…The Tri-Mode ROC device with 16-wide PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes provides SAS data transfer rates of 22.5, 12, 6Gb/s per lane and 6Gb/s SATA data transfer rates per lane. The high-port count ROC helps eliminate storage bottlenecks with support of x8, x4, x2, and x1 PCI Express® lanes and complies with the PCIe 4.0 specification, offering up to 6 million IOPS (random reads) and up to 900,000 IOPS in RAID (random writes).”9 To learn more about the Dell PERC 12, visit https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/p/ dell-poweredge-raid-controller-12/. |
With these lower latencies, a solution will be quicker to handle interactions with the Cassandra database, which might include anything from pulling up X-ray images in a hospital to analyzing a large set of data on an ecommerce business’s customer preferences.
The Dell PowerEdge C6620 also offered an enormous advantage on throughput, delivering over twice the operations per second of the HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9. Given the lower latencies we saw, this is unsurprising—because the PowerEdge C6620 could process operations faster (with lower latency), we would expect it to also be able to handle more operations in a given time. Depending on the read- intensive workloads you’re running, this increase in throughput could translate to quicker load times for your customers or faster data analysis, among other possibilities.
NoSQL databases and Cassandra in today’s business landscape
For this study, we tested with Apache Cassandra, a widely used NoSQL database system. NoSQL, or non-relational, databases are a category of database system that store and query data that do not have a traditional data structure. Traditional SQL databases organize data in a column-row format for finding or creating relationships across the data. To store data in a SQL database, all data in each table must have the same structure and fit a pre-defined schema, with every row in each table including the same columns and formats every time. NoSQL databases, however, can organize data more dynamically. They can deal with data from documents, graphs, key-values, and more. This flexibility lets people use them to analyze documents or data that don’t follow identical structuring formats. For organizations that need to store and analyze unstructured data—which may include data from Internet of Things (IoT) applications, audio, video, text files, social media posts, and more—a NoSQL database is a great option.
There are many types of NoSQL database systems; Apache Cassandra is a type of key-value and wide- column store. These databases have essentially two fields: One is the key, and the other is the value. The value can be any type of data (text, numbers, etc.). Taking our previous example, a key-value database could have some keys that correspond to a date, others that are numbers, and so on. A wide-column database, which Cassandra uses, is a two-dimensional key-value database, where instead of mapping to just one value, the keys can map to several columns of values.
Apache Cassandra is a distributed database, meaning that it can run on multiple nodes while acting as a single entity. This makes it resilient and highly scalable. Its scalability, combined with the flexibility afforded by its hybrid key-value/tabular model, allows it to handle many types of big data work very well. Cassandra is also open-source and free, a compelling benefit for organizations seeking to save on licensing fees.
The flexibility of Cassandra makes it suitable for a very large range of use cases. For example, Instagram uses Cassandra to support its content feed, Spotify uses it to store playlist metadata, and Intuit uses it as part of their largest production clusters supporting TurboTax.10,11,12 Common uses of Cassandra include:
- Analysis of customer data for personalization and recommendation, such as in ecommerce environments and content sharing or streaming websites
- Storage and analysis of IoT data, such as data gathered from mobile and wearable devices, environmental sensors, and edge devices
- Fraud detection, especially for financial organizations
- Messaging, such as for organizations’ internal messaging platforms
We chose to test with Cassandra in part because so many organizations rely on it for everyday operations. Approximately 90 percent of Fortune 100 companies use Apache Cassandra in some capacity.13 If your organization uses Cassandra or is considering doing so, to get the most value from it, you will want to ensure that the solution backing your implementation offers high performance. As our testing highlights, the Dell PowerEdge C6620 with Broadcom-based PERC 12 can deliver just that.
Dell PowerEdge servers: A proven history of strong Apache Cassandra performance In this study, we tested the Apache Cassandra performance of a new Dell PowerEdge C6620 server compared to an HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 server, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen strong Cassandra performance on a latest-generation Dell server. In 2019, we tested Apache Cassandra performance on a 14th generation PowerEdge C-series server, the Dell EMC PowerEdge C6420. Pitted against an older modular solution of HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 server nodes, the PowerEdge C6420 accomplished double the amount of work in the same amount of rack space.14 Two years prior, in 2017, we assessed a different product line from the 14th generation of PowerEdge servers—the Dell EMC PowerEdge FC640 server—and found that it delivered dramatically more throughput and consistently lower latency than a legacy solution of PowerEdge R710 servers.15 |
Conclusion
Data proliferation today is rapid, and its growth shows no signs of stopping. For businesses that can take advantage of that data, there is tremendous potential value. One recent McKinsey study notes that “companies that are using data-driven B2B sales-growth engines report above-market growth and EBITDA increases in the range of 15 to 25 percent.”16 With data flooding in so quickly and in so many different forms, however, companies need high-performing big data solutions to have a chance at utilizing that data effectively.
We tested the performance of two platforms with a read-intensive Apache Cassandra database system big- data workload to assess which might be better suited to speedily deliver the insights decision makers need. Compared to an older HPE ProLiant XL170r Gen9 server with an HPE Smart Array P440ar controller, the new Dell PowerEdge C6620 with Broadcom-based PERC 12 RAID controller delivered faster read and update latencies and more than twice the throughput. This improvement in performance can help you glean more value from your unstructured data more quickly. If you’re watching your stores of unstructured data grow but are still leaning on older servers for your critical Cassandra workloads, it may be time for an upgrade.
- Lionel Sujay Vailshery, “Number of Internet of Things (IoT connected devices worldwide from 2019 to 2021, in forecasts from 2022 to 2030,” accessed July 13, 2023, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183457/iot-connect- ed-devices-worldwide/.
- “PowerEdge C6620,” accessed June 23, 2023, https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/products/servers/ technical-support/poweredge-c6620-spec-sheet.pdf.
- Brian F. Cooper, Adam Silberstein, Erwin Tam, Raghu Ramakrishnan, Russell Sears, “Benchmarking Cloud Serving Systems with YCSB,” accessed June 23, 2023, https://courses.cs.duke.edu/fall13/compsci590.4/838-CloudPa- pers/ycsb.pdf.
- “The Ultimate YCSB Benchmark Guide (2021),” accessed June 23, 2023, https://benchant.com/blog/ycsb.
- Brian F. Cooper, Adam Silberstein, Erwin Tam, Raghu Ramakrishnan, Russell Sears, “Benchmarking Cloud Serving Systems with YCSB,” accessed June 23, 2023, https://courses.cs.duke.edu/fall13/compsci590.4/838-CloudPa- pers/ycsb.pdf.
- “brianfrankcooper/YCSB,” accessed June 23, 2023, https://github.com/brianfrankcooper/YCSB/blob/master/doc/coreworkloads.html.
- “Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 12 User’s Guide PERC H965i Adapter, PERC H965i Front, and PERC H965i MX,” accessed June 27, 2023, https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/perc-h965i-front/perc12/dell-tech- nologies-poweredge-raid-controller-12?guid=guid-5889415d-b297-43a0-9197-113a56c33c79&lang=en-us.
- “SAS4116W 24G SAS Tri-Mode RAID-on-Chip (ROC),” accessed June 27, 2023, https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/raid-on-chip/sas-4116w.
- “SAS4116W 24G SAS Tri-Mode RAID-on-Chip (ROC).”
- Instagram Engineering, “Open-sourcing a 10x reduction in Apache Cassandra tail latency,” accessed June 27, 2023, https://instagram-engineering.com/open-sourcing-a-10x-reduction-in-apache-cassandra-tail-latencyd- 64f86b43589.
- Kinshuk Mishra and Matt Brown, “Personalization at Spotify using Cassandra,” accessed June 27, 2023, https://engineering.atspotify.com/2015/01/personalization-at-spotify-using-cassandra/.
- Denson Pokta, “Pronto! Intuit Releases First Open Source Cassandra Cluster Manager,” accessed June 27, 2023, https://thenewstack.io/pronto-intuit-releases-first-open-source-cassandra-cluster-manager/.
- Jeff Carpenter, “How the world caught up with Apache Cassandra,” accessed June 27, 2023, https://techcrunch.com/sponsor/datastax/how-the-world-caught-up-with-apache-cassandra/.
- “Move your private cloud to Dell EMC PowerEdge C6420 server nodes and boost Apache Cassandra database analysis,” accessed June 23, 2023, https://www.principledtechnologies.com/Dell/Power-Edge-C6420-Apache- Cassandra-1019-v2.pdf.
- “Update your private cloud with 14th generation Dell EMC PowerEdge FC640 servers and do more work in less space,” accessed June 23, 2023, https://www.principledtechnologies.com/Dell/PowerEdge_FX2s_FC640_ Apache_Cassandra_1117.pdf.
- Jochen Böringer, Alexander Dierks, Isabel Huber, and Dennis Spillecke, “Insights to impact: Creating and sustain- ing data-driven commercial growth,” accessed July 13, 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growthmar- keting-and-sales/our-insights/insights-to-impact-creating-and-sustaining-data-driven-commercial-growth.