SanDisk DAS Cache for Dell R730xd with SSDs
I got a quote from Dell for SanDisk DAS Cache today.
$399 for the license with 3 years of Maintenance. Not bad!
The DAS Cache allow you to use SSDs for Cache for your SAS or SATA drives.
It's kind of like the hybrid Flash storage I have on my Nimble SAN.
I didn't buy it with my Dell Poweredge R730xd, because I was moving two Fusion-io iodrive2 PCIe SSD cards from another server. I think it's an option if you include SSDs in your cart.
Dell says that PCIe SSDs are only supported on the R730xd and not the R730 for some reason.
Once you get the license, they give you a login to the download server, then you download the software. If you have the login you can also use the link on the support.dell.com drivers page.
This is the Sandisk download server:
https://dell.flexnetoperations.com/control/skdl/login?nextURL=%2Fcontrol%2Fskdl%2Fhome
From what I read I will need to format my iodrive2 SSDs to 512B block size.
When I checked them, they had already been formated from the factory to 512B.
From what I read, this is the command to format them from the command line if required:
I have two cards, so I need to format both fct0 and fct1. This is the same for both windows and linux.
fio-detach /dev/fct0
fio-detach /dev/fct1
I got this error: Error: failed to detach /dev/fct0: device busy.
I went and detached them from the io GUI and then I was able to work with them after that.
fio-format -b 512 /dev/fct0
fio-format -b 512 /dev/fct1
fio-attach /dev/fct0
fio-attach /dev/fct1
$399 for the license with 3 years of Maintenance. Not bad!
The DAS Cache allow you to use SSDs for Cache for your SAS or SATA drives.
It's kind of like the hybrid Flash storage I have on my Nimble SAN.
I didn't buy it with my Dell Poweredge R730xd, because I was moving two Fusion-io iodrive2 PCIe SSD cards from another server. I think it's an option if you include SSDs in your cart.
Dell says that PCIe SSDs are only supported on the R730xd and not the R730 for some reason.
Once you get the license, they give you a login to the download server, then you download the software. If you have the login you can also use the link on the support.dell.com drivers page.
This is the Sandisk download server:
https://dell.flexnetoperations.com/control/skdl/login?nextURL=%2Fcontrol%2Fskdl%2Fhome
From what I read I will need to format my iodrive2 SSDs to 512B block size.
When I checked them, they had already been formated from the factory to 512B.
From what I read, this is the command to format them from the command line if required:
I have two cards, so I need to format both fct0 and fct1. This is the same for both windows and linux.
fio-detach /dev/fct0
fio-detach /dev/fct1
I got this error: Error: failed to detach /dev/fct0: device busy.
I went and detached them from the io GUI and then I was able to work with them after that.
fio-format -b 512 /dev/fct0
fio-format -b 512 /dev/fct1
fio-attach /dev/fct0
fio-attach /dev/fct1
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