Rapid Storage API Documentation

[CBate1]

There is a nice little file called ISDI2.dll that contains a lot of useful functions for programmatically monitoring and controlling RAID volumes in RST. Specifically there was an API called the Standard Storage Interface (SSI) which was even documented on the Intel Github (although slightly out-of-date and weirdly unstable for an API: irstessi/ssi.h at master · intel/irstessi · GitHub ). Recent versions of the RST driver kit have an ISDI2.dll that does not contain the SSI functions, and SSI seems to have been replaced by some mystery API called "ISI".

What I am wondering is if there is any publicly available documentation for this API. There have been no CLI tools available since 13.2, so this API is really the only way to do anything with RST without having to open the bulky, slow default UI.

I previously asked this in a support request, which was met with a suggestion to post a question in Communities. The post in communities then suggested I make a post here (although I'm not sure this is the right subforum, this question doesn't really fit in any of the categories).

[CBate1]

If this is not the place to ask this, can someone recommend a forum that might be more relevant? This is the only subforum that had any questions about RST that were actually answered helpfully, but it's been almost two weeks with no suggestions. I don't mean to sound impatient.

[Olewinski__Aleksande]

Hi,

I am trying to get RAID status from our app and I need some information about API. Did you get anywhere with this new API called "ISI"? Do you have any documentation by now? What was the last driver version which worked with the Standard Storage Interface (SSI)?

Regards

Aleksander

[Olewinski__Aleksande]

Hi, 

Reposting the question as the previous did not appear here. Could you kindly answer Bates Colton question about API? If this information requires privileged access, please reply that this is the case. I need to know if there is an option to check the RAID status from the custom application. The answer to Bates question would help. 

Regards

Aleksander 

[CBate1]

Hi Aleksander,

I haven't gotten any useful information about ISI yet. Sorry about the delay in answering, I have pretty much lost hope for any useful information from this post, so I don't check it often anymore. I have not heard anything about it being privileged information either, I mean I've heard NOTHING.

The last version of the driver that is on the Intel Download Center that contains ISDI2.dll with any SSI functions is 15.9.0.1015. However, the API documentation I linked to is technically for the Linux driver, and is either different, outdated, or just wrong compared to the actual API for any actual release version of the driver. I don't know if it changes between releases, but I have decided to use 14.8.16.1063 for everything because that is the one I have tested enough to be confident I know the actual API.

Try to avoid rolling back versions too, it's unsupported and I have had problems attempting it. If you do try it, back all of your data up  beforehand unless you love adrenaline.

I recommend doing some testing of your own to make sure that you have the right signatures and buffer sizes before you do anything vaguely important with this.

Additionally, regardless of how you install it, ISDI2.dll will always be 32-bit. This causes some problems if you want to call the functions from a 64-bit application.

Depending on what you're doing, an alternative might be to use a patched version of the CLI tool rstcli64. This uses the official 13.2 build of the tool and basically patches out the sanity checks on the driver version. The 13.2 release is not provided on the Download Center, so that might be difficult. The patch in the linked post will probably stop it from working on the versions it was designed to work on (<= 13.2), so it might be a better idea to patch the jump unconditional. I have not had any trouble using this patched tool with any version of the driver, including the ones not including the SSI functions in ISDI2.dll, but keep in mind that it is strictly not supported and it's very likely that some things won't work right. The only reason I am recommending this to you is that, frustratingly, nothing else is supported either for this kind of use case. 

I hope this thread helps you more than it's helped me,

Colton