How Verify System Platform Max. Performance

Transcription

1 How Verify System Platform Max. Performance Instructions for all SSD7000 NVMe RAID Controller (for Windows platforms) Maximizing the performance potential of your NVMe storage starts with your host platform. To ensure your host system is able to get the most out of the SSD7100 RAID controller, there are three things you must verify: 1. Set the host system s Power Plan 2. Determine available PCIe bandwidth 3. Benchmark your system s performance capability using IOmeter For the purposes of this guide, we will use the SSD7101A-1 as the example NVMe RAID controller. Device Driver GUI Tool SSD7101A-1 HighPoint_NVMe_Windows_Stroport_HLK_v _18_05_16.zip RAID_Manager_Win_v2.13.3_18_03_16.zip Iometer win64.x86_64-bin.zip Step 1. Check the motherboard s PCIE settings Customers using motherboards that support VROC functions will need to access the motherboard s BIOS utility and make sure the VROC setting is disabled for any PCIe slot hosting a SSD7100 series NVMe RAID controller. For example, the screenshot below shows the VROC settings for an ASUS PRIME X299-DELUXE motherboard. You would need to adjust the setting of the target PCIe slot using the Advanced CPU Storage Configuration PCIEX16 menu. Make sure to change this setting to Disabled. If left in the default, Enabled setting, the SSD7100 controller will only be able to utilize 4 lanes (PCIe x4) of transfer bandwidth, and will be prevented from performing optimally. 1

2 Step 2. Set the System s Power Plan 1. Insert the SSD7101A into a PCI-e x16 slot that is directly connected to the motherboard s CPU. If you intend to install two SSD7101A-1 controllers, please make sure the motherboard has two free PCIe x16 slots. 2. Adjust the system's power plan to Ultimate Performance or High Performance: 2

3 Step 3. Check for available PCIe bus Bandwidth via the HighPoint RAID Management (WebGUI) 1. Make sure to install the HighPoint NVMe driver and RAID management software, then reboot the system. 2. Open the management software and select the Physical page. Click Enclosure from the menu on the left-side of the interface; you can view the PCI-e bandwidth occupied by the SSD7101A-1. A Current Link Width of x16 and Current Link Speed of 8.0 GT/s is required in order to ensure the SSD7100 RAID controller operates at peak performance. 3. First, make sure the target slot is capable of operating at true x16 (electrical) speeds. If the slot can operate at x16 speeds, shutdown the system and carefully remove the SSD7101A-1. Carefully clean the PCIe Goldfingers and reinsert the SSD7101A-1. Reboot the system and check the Current Link Note: if two SSD7101A-1 cards are connected, two Enclosures will appear under the Physical interface. Please check their bandwidth separately. 4. Uninstall the HighPoint NVMe RAID driver. Please consult the SSD7100 product manual for the proper procedure. 3

4 Step 4. Benchmark the System s Maximum Performance potential via IOmeter Note: before beginning Iometer testing make sure to uninstall all HighPoint NVMe Driver and RAID management software packages! This ensures the baseline performance has not influenced by the HighPoint NVMe Solution. We recommend IOmeter for benchmarking storage performance. All HighPoint storage products are verified with IOmeter. It has been considered an industry standard benchmarking tool for many years, and is widely used to test and verify the performance capabilities of storage configurations. 1. When using IOmeter to test the performance of the SSD7101A-1, first make sure that the NVMe drives are configured as Legacy disks. Use the WebGUI to delete any RAID configurations, and then reboot the system this will restore all of the drives to a Legacy state. Legacy disks will be recognized independently by Windows disk Manager. Partition and format each to assign them drive letters. The example below shows 4 NVMe drives (D, E, F and G). C is the Windows boot drive. 4

5 To configure an IOmeter test: a) Open the IOmeter test tool. The Disk Targets should show the partitioned NVMe drives (D, E, F &G). The topology column is the utility s workbench each Worker is a test suite. Maximum Disk Size is the file size transferred during the test: b) First, delete the workers until only one is shown in the Topology column. c) Next, enter test file size (Maximum Disk Size). The unit is sector; one sector is 512 bytes, two sectors are 1KB, etc. The screenshot shows a Maximum Disk size of 30GB (30*1024*1024*2 Sectors). d) Click on Access Specifications, to enter the script selection page: e) Click NEW to create a new test script. After the script is created, select the script you created and click Add to add the script to the enabled list (Assigned Access Specifications column). f) A script is configured using the following settings: Name- name your new script 5

6 Transfer Request Size adjusts the test data block size Percent Read/Write Distribution - can be used to adjust the read and write percentages. The left most setting is 100%Write and the right most setting is 00%Read is read Percent Random / Sequential Distribution- can adjust the balance between random and sequential I/O. The left most setting is 100% Sequential and the right most setting is 100% g) Click OK after you have configured the scrip to review your settings: h) Click on Results Display, and adjust the refresh rate to 1s: 6

7 Click Test Setup, and adjust the test duration to 60s. Under Cycling Options, select Cycle # Outstanding I/Os run step outstanding I/Os on all disks at a time, and adjust the queue depth to 64: i) After the above settings are completed, select the only remaining worker, and click copy worker (once for each NVMe drive you want to test). Note: you can click each worker once more to rename it for easy reference. 7

8 j) Next, select a drive for each worker. For example, worker 1 has been assigned to Drive D, and Worker 2 has been assigned to Drive E, and so on: k) Click Save Script to save the script. l) Click run to start the performance tests. Note, the time required to prepare and run each test varies depending on the individual test settings and max file size. After the test have completed, select Results Display to view the outcome. 8

9 m) We recommend using four Samsung 970 Pro SSD s for the best results. The example screenshot below shows that 2M continuous read performance is approximately to 14000MB/s: n) An IOmeter test script is embedded below: 4-disk-2M-Seq-Read.icf Note, this script is only applicable to 4x NVMe SSD s (partitioned as D drive, E drive, F drive, & G drive). If the partitions are mapped differently, please refer to steps h, j, k, l to modify the script. 9