User's Manual

CacheCade Using Solid-State Drives

CacheCade is used to improve random read performance of the solid-state drive (SSD) based virtual

disks. A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent

data. SSDs significantly increase the I/O performance (IOPS) and/or write speed in Mbps from a storage

device. With storage controllers, you can create a CacheCade using SSDs. The CacheCade is then used

for better performance of the storage I/O operations. Use either Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSDs or Serial

Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) SSDs to create a CacheCade.

Create a CacheCade with SSDs in the following scenarios:

• Maximum application performance — Create a CacheCade using SSDs to achieve higher performance

without wasted capacity.

• Maximum application performance and higher capacity — Create a CacheCade using SSDs to balance

the capacity of the CacheCade with high performance SSDs.

• Higher capacity — If you do not have empty slots for additional HDDs, use SSDs and create a

CacheCade. This reduces the number of HDDs required and increases application performance.

The CacheCade feature has the following restrictions:

• Only certified SSDs can be used to create a CacheCade.

• If you create a CacheCade using SSDs, the SSD properties are still retained. At a later time, you can

use the SSD to create virtual disks.

• A CacheCade can contain either SAS drives or SATA drives but not both.

• Each SSD in the CacheCade does not have to be of the same size. The CacheCade size is

automatically calculated as follows: CacheCade size =capacity of the smallest SSD * the number of

SSDs. The unused portion of SSD is wasted and cannot be used as an additional CacheCade or an

SSD-based virtual disk.

• The total amount of cache pool with a CacheCade is 512GB. If you create a CacheCade which is

greater than 512GB, the storage controller still uses only 512GB.

• The CacheCade is supported only on PERC H710P, PERC H800, and PERC H810 controllers with 1GB

NVRAM.

• In a storage enclosure, the total number of logical devices including virtual disks and CacheCade(s)

cannot exceed 64.

NOTE: In order to use CacheCade for the virtual disk, the Write and Read policy of the HDD-based

virtual disk must be set to Write Back or Force Write Back and read policy must be set to Read

Ahead or Adaptive Read Ahead.