How FastPath and CacheCade work to improve RAID speeds and leverage SSD

When you’re looking for the fastest SSD raid speeds, you need an Intel S3500 drive, FastPath, CacheCade, and Hivelocity Hosting. A fast drive can only do so much for a dedicated server. Combining that drive with performance enhancing software in a Hivelocity data center allows you to get the most out of your dedicated server.

RAID

Looking at the bill for a collection of solid state drives (SSD) will leave you wondering what part of this system is inexpensive? That’s probably why the term RAID now stands for redundant array of independent disks. However, an array of disks is still much less expensive than the cost of loosing your data. As good as RAID systems are at storing and protecting data, they can be a little slow for a range of applications. The redundancy eats into the speed, but there are ways to get increase performance for these systems.

FastPath

Online transaction processing (OLTP) applications are a great example of a service that can benefit from FastPath controllers. The MegaRAID Fast Path software can increase array performance by as much as three times, when compared with MegaRAID SAS cards without the FastPath software. This can increase performance for any applications with small workloads that are high-volume and highly random. FastPath can greatly increase the input/output operations per second (IOPS) of any solid state disk array.

CacheCade

Some files on a server are accessed much more frequently than others. CacheCade recognizes which files are used most frequently and stores these in a solid state array while leaving other files in your existing array. When you already have your data on a collection of spinning disks, or just want to save some money buy avoiding the expense of SSDs for all your data, this system can help you boost server performance. Basically, the SSD array becomes a front-side flash cache for your significantly larger disk array. The end result is a substantial performance gain using fewer expensive SSDs.

Intel S3500 SSD

One of the best solid state drives used in data centers today is the Intel Solid-State Drive DC S3500 Series. These drives work great on their own and even better when included in an array. However, you can pull their maximum performance when the S3500 is installed into a system with FastPath and CacheCade included. Here’s the performance specs for the Intel Solid-State Drive DC S3500 Series taken from the product specifications.

Read and Write IOPS (Full LBA Range, Iometer* Queue Depth 32)

Random 4 KB Reads: Up to 75,000 IOPS

Random 4 KB Writes: Up to 11,500 IOPS

Random 8 KB Reads: Up to 47,500 IOPS

Random 8 KB Writes: Up to 5,500 IOPS

Bandwidth Performance

Sustained Sequential Read: Up to 500 MB/s

Sustained Sequential Write: Up to 450 MB/s

How Hivelocity Hosting brings it all together

This is exactly what Hivelocity Hosting does for our clients. We take Intel S3500 drive, combine them with FastPath and CachCade software, and install them in dedicated servers. The Intel S3500 drive comes with fast and consistent read performance. FastPath can boost the overall performance of the SSD array. On top of that, CacheCade prioritizes the most used data on your server for optimal performance. Bringing together the most reliable hardware and the fastest software ensures all your web applications will benefit from high velocity performance.

Any Hivelocity server can be enhanced with an SSD and/or RAID. Any server with RAID has the option to add BBU, Fastpath and Cachecade to improve performance. Battery Back Up (BBU) and FastPath can be added to any RAID configuration for just $49. BBU + Fastpath + Cachecade can be added to any server for just $89/month. This price includes adding an 80GB SSD to your server to fully take advantage of Cachecade’s benefits.