Server 2012 R2 SSD cache

ochadd

[H]ard|Gawd
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May 9, 2008
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My home file server is Server 2012 R2 standard with a 4 TB Intel RST RAID 1 array with dedupe enabled. It's storage for backups and surveillance video. I'd like to add a SSD write cache in the 128 GB range. Ideally only caching of certain folders or even volume/partitions. PrimoCache might work but they want $120 for the license. Any others work considering?
 
Video surveillance is terrible to dedupe and compress. Its all h264 which is already heavily deduped and compressed once its pooped out by the encoder. Don't waste the cpu cycles and time to do it. Get the 128gig SSD, put the OS and all your critical stuff on it, move the surveillance stuff over to an only your 4tb volume. Run dedupe only on the SSD. Don't waste your money on caching software.
 
I only have dedupe enabled on the volume with the backup and file store. Getting 20% savings. That's the only volume I'm looking to accelerate as well.
 
I like tiered storage spaces because it is the F word as in free but can be tricky to configure. It does allow pinning data to tiers as long as it fits but there doesnt appear to be a way to enable write caching exclusively for certain data. It is 'intelligent' in that sequential streams are directed to the HDD tier to reduce using up write cycles of the SSD tier, instead focusing on random I/O. I'm not sure if CleverCache can do the same but its an O&O product. Another option is creation of a tiered volume with a Marvell 923x controller but it really doesnt allow management of what goes to what tier. Definitely delivers the goods in performance though. Intel RST also has a caching feature and is limited to use of 64GB I believe but I have not used that one.
 
You cant really accelerate a volume. But what you can do is put you IO intensive work loads on the SSD(highly randomized work loads). Backups, and video data(both long sequential writes) on non-ssd storage. Messing around with caching software is very superficial on a setup this basic. I mean.. If you want to tinker and constantly tune your setup, for minimal returns.. cool.. But that gets old pretty quickly. Save your money on caching software, and buy a bigger SSD instead.
 
Yeah the write-back cache looks like something worth trying. If I ever rebuilt this box I might have to try that.
 
another alternative that might work is primo cache. Its third party but i've had good luck using it with my drive bender pools.
 
Lots of good ideas in here (Storage Spaces, Primo Cache), personally I use DrivePool with the SSD plugin on my one server. Might be an additional option.
 
Think I'll just leave it alone. I have a few older 64-128GB SSDs laying around now and thought I'd make use of one. Not worth the hassle to speed up backups.
 
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