Rapid Storage Technology
Intel® RST, RAID
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IRST: RAID 1 dramatically diminishes SSD performance

ADahm
Novice
3,591 Views

I'm using a top notch workstation desktop machine (ASUS X99 WS/E mainboard) with one system SSD (Samsung 850 Pro), two data SSDs (Samsung 850 Pro) and two archive HDDs (Western Digital). Both "twins" are joined in RAID 1 clusters each (i.e. "Data", "Archive") for maximum failure safety.

The SSD performance of the two SSDs attached to the IRST "Data" RAID 1 is very poor.

Compared to the non-RAID system SSD, read/write operations on the RAID 1 SSD cluster take about up to 30 times longer!!

I would have expected that, even when using Write-through cache mode, read/write performance would be at least the same (if not even better) on read operations and only slightly worse on write operations (the write operations should perform in parallel, hence the drives' write acknowledgements should be signalled almost synchronously).

Intel: Please improve SSD RAID 1 performance drastically in IRST firmware in order to address modern hardware scenarios.

The current lack of SATA performance delivered by IRST is ludicrous!

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idata
Employee
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Hello BetterToday,

 

 

Thank you for contacting Intel Communities.

 

 

Can you please provide the following information to better assist you?

 

 

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/technologies/000006351.html System Reports for Intel® Rapid Storage Technology

 

 

I hope to hear from you soon.

 

 

Best Regards,

 

JC
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ADahm
Novice
2,016 Views

Hi JC,

thank for for helping!

Sure, I'm going to retrieve the requested system data in a second.

Please let me first share with you an additional benchmark I took with my DELL M6700 notebook, equipped with similar configuration: one system SSD (Micron RealSSD C400), two data SSDs (Liteonit LCS-512), joined in RAID 1 cluster (i.e. "Data") for maximum failure safety.

Same thing here: Although many of the reads are faster (but this may be owing to the commonly faster Liteonit SSDs), the 4k random read is 15 times slower. And write performance is significantly slower, too.

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ADahm
Novice
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I created the IRST system information files now.

Due to the private information that might be involved with the system information I posted both files to the support ticket which I simultaneously created (see screenshot below).

Do you have access to this data?

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idata
Employee
2,016 Views

Hi BetterToday,

 

 

Thank you for the information.

 

 

I do have access to the reports you sent through the support ticket.

 

 

Can you please confirm the following information:
  • Drivers' firmware are up to date
  • BIOS is updated on both systems
  • Chipset driver is updated.

I hope to hear from you soon.

 

 

Regards,

 

JC
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ADahm
Novice
2,016 Views

Hi JC,

yes, absolutely. I can confirm that I set-up both machines anew a few weeks ago, with latest BIOS and latest drivers. End of March I performed a switch from Windows 7/64 to Windows 10/64 and took the opportunity to update everything, wipe the disks and install Windows 10/64 from scratch with latest drivers.

The performance (subjectively) didn't change, though.

I never performed CrystalDiskMark before because I believed the performance I got was the maximum I could reach. Still I always was subtly unsatisfied with the performance, though.

I objectively noticed the bad performance the first time when I recently bought an HP Elite x2 1012 cross-over tablet (which doesn't come with IRST/RAID and with only a single SSD). That tiny little thing surprisingly outperformed my expensive top notch systems easily and drastically. That's what caused the idea of something being wrong in the combination of IRST/RAID/SSD to grow inside me.

Thanks for helping,

Axel

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idata
Employee
2,016 Views

Hi BetterToday,

 

 

I have sent you a private message.

 

 

Regards,

 

JC
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