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1343 Discussions

Can Optane 1600X be combined as caching drive in hybrid volume with another NVMe SSD?

Alejandro64M
Beginner
3,287 Views

Hi, fellows!

 

Optane 1600X in Z390 (MSI Ace) with 9600KF in pair with another 1TB NVMe drive (HP EX950) 1TB.

 

Receive "There are no valid disk pairs in your system"

 

Can a hybrid volume be assembled  with an Optane drive as caching with another NVMe SSD?

 

PS Heard something that to be able to do it a main drive must have at least 5MB of free space on Recovery Volume. 

 

 

 

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1 Solution
Hot_Wheelz_83
Beginner
3,036 Views

Alejandro, hopefully I can add a little clarity before this thread is permanently closed. As others have already said, the p1600x is designed to operate as a standalone ssd. M10 on the other hand were primarily designed to operate as an acceleration cache alone side a traditional mechanical hard drive with the aid of the intel RST driver and associated software. There were also hybrid devices that had the optane physically packaged within the same hardware device as a larger drive using slower technologies. So, right out of the gate, if you want to make use of the RST driver then no, you can't use it with optane + an NVME drive. 2nd if you want to use the RST driver on the latest Intel hardware this is also not supported. What the p1600x optane drives are absolutely excellent for if you use multiple of them in a striped mirror configuration is as a cache disk for Linux or BSD based servers and NAS. Unraid, Zfs etc. allow you to use a relatively small fast ssd cache to significantly improve the performance of a pool of large, much slower mechanical drives and in this use case, the exceptionally low latency of optane generally means that there are few other technologies that can match it, the excellent write endurance also makes it ideal for such high write applications. One such application is a ZFS meta data device. A quick side note, the 2nd gen M10 optane with exceptionally low latency and sufficient write endurance such that you'll essentially never need to worry about drive wear) also makes an excellent high endurance boot disk if you can deal with being limited to 64GB.

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12 Replies
n_scott_pearson
Super User
3,275 Views

This is a standalone SSD that utilizes Optane 3D XPoint memory; it cannot be used as a cache to accelerate another drive.

Sorry,

...S

P.S. Just for completeness: For caching - which this drive doesn't support - there must be at least 5MB of free disk space at the end of the drive. If you have partitions that go to the end of the drive, you need to make the last partition smaller.

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Alejandro64M
Beginner
3,267 Views

No-o-o-o! <tears>

Are you 100500% sure about that?

 

I wonder what this drive is for then with it's almost endless write resource if not for intensive caching operations? As far as I remember it was described as a caching purpose in enterprise solutions.

 

PS I have a fusion drive Mac for almost 7 years - such a wonderful curious thing a hybrid drive! 

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Alejandro64M
Beginner
3,267 Views

PS Just for clarification: free 5MB must be present on the drive being cached, not an Optane cache drive - correct? And the Optane drives that COULD be used as cache - could they use another NVMe drive in the system as a drive to cache? Ask out of curiosity

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n_scott_pearson
Super User
3,259 Views

Am I sure? Check out these articles:

It is the Intel® Optane™ Memory M10 Series modules that supported acceleration (caching). Definitely not an Enterprise solution, however. AFAIK, they can only be used to accelerate SATA drives. If you are further interested, here are some related documents:

Finally, read this announcement/update: Intel® Optane™ Business Update: What Does This Mean for Warranty and Support.

Sorry,

...S

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Alejandro64M
Beginner
3,247 Views

Still no mention about no caching support for 1600X

 

PS I'm sorry. But I just cannot find any clear mention that 1600X cannot be used as cache drive. Furthermore one of your links provided data that 660p could be used in hybrid drives. That's NVMe drive.

 

Mentioning about End of Line concern obsolete models (M10 to be more precise). Not a single word about 1600X. Most articles are dated far before my 1600X drive was even manufactured.

 

Alejandro64M_0-1671726862175.png

 

 

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n_scott_pearson
Super User
3,243 Views

Intel has killed the Optane business completely. As the linked article says, "exiting the Optane and drone businesses". They wrote off off over US$500M in Optane inventory. See this article for external review of the situation: Intel kills off Optane Memory, writes off $559 million inventory.

660p support was a special case. AFAIK, there was never any support for doing so with 3rd-party NVMe drives.

If you read the article, you will see that they used the word 'caching' in a totally different context.

...S

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Alejandro64M
Beginner
3,227 Views

Thank you for your support.

 

I carefully studied links you provided.  I need to point the fact that I don't have doubts that Intel discontinued Optane drives.

I just didn't find any clear statement that 1600X can't be used as a cache component in hybrid Optane drive...

 

And - in case of an other, appropriate for caching Optane drive model  - can Optane hybrid drive be assembled with another NVMe drive? Or Optany hybrid drive can be combined only with SATA drive?

 

Could you please clarify about the cache context article about 1600X provide? I'm not a specialist in this field. For my mind caching is always a caching. You meant it's not for Optane drive caching? I didn't find any mention of that

 

 

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BrusC_Intel
Moderator
3,214 Views

Hello, Alejandro64M.

 

Good day,

 

There are different Optane-branded products with different purposes.

 

Intel Optane Memory products are designed to accelerate/cache SATA devices like HDD or SSD in combination with the Intel RST driver, (with the exception of the 660p which is NVMe as n_scott_pearson mentioned). These are the ones that will stop being supported after the 11th and 12th generation because the Intel RST driver will no longer provide this functionality due to the product line being discontinued.

 

The Optane P1600X Series is not an Optane Memory, it is an Optane SSD, it is designed to work the same way as any other PCIe NVMe SSD, and it is not designed for acceleration the same way the Optane Memory products are.

 

I hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions, and I will follow up on December 27th.

 

Regards,

 

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician

 

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BrusC_Intel
Moderator
3,161 Views

Hello, Alejandro64M.

 

Good day,


I wanted to follow up on this thread to check if we can help in any way.


The thread will be closed on December 30th if there is no confirmation about further assistance being required.

 

Regards,

 

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician


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Alejandro64M
Beginner
3,130 Views

I would still be grateful for any direct intel link where explicitly stated information provided above that P1600X cannot be used as a part of Optane hybrid drive.

 

Thank you!

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BrusC_Intel
Moderator
3,113 Views

Hello, Alejandro64M.

 

These are just different product lines, with the Intel® Optane™ Memory products being the ones designed to be used along the Intel RST driver and the Optane Memory and Storage Management application, this is why you get the error message originally mentioned.

 

The article "Supported Drives for Acceleration with Intel® Optane™ Memory" describes what drives can be used for acceleration and also makes a note about the Optane SSDs with some of them being listed:

- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000025074/memory-and-storage/intel-optane-memory.html

 

I'd suggest going back to the place of purchase and reviewing with them their return policy if you intended to purchase an Optane Memory instead of an Optane SSD  (in case it was recently purchased).

 

The thread will be closed on January 3rd if there is no confirmation about further assistance being required.

 

Regards,

 

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician

 

0 Kudos
Hot_Wheelz_83
Beginner
3,037 Views

Alejandro, hopefully I can add a little clarity before this thread is permanently closed. As others have already said, the p1600x is designed to operate as a standalone ssd. M10 on the other hand were primarily designed to operate as an acceleration cache alone side a traditional mechanical hard drive with the aid of the intel RST driver and associated software. There were also hybrid devices that had the optane physically packaged within the same hardware device as a larger drive using slower technologies. So, right out of the gate, if you want to make use of the RST driver then no, you can't use it with optane + an NVME drive. 2nd if you want to use the RST driver on the latest Intel hardware this is also not supported. What the p1600x optane drives are absolutely excellent for if you use multiple of them in a striped mirror configuration is as a cache disk for Linux or BSD based servers and NAS. Unraid, Zfs etc. allow you to use a relatively small fast ssd cache to significantly improve the performance of a pool of large, much slower mechanical drives and in this use case, the exceptionally low latency of optane generally means that there are few other technologies that can match it, the excellent write endurance also makes it ideal for such high write applications. One such application is a ZFS meta data device. A quick side note, the 2nd gen M10 optane with exceptionally low latency and sufficient write endurance such that you'll essentially never need to worry about drive wear) also makes an excellent high endurance boot disk if you can deal with being limited to 64GB.

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