IBM/NetApp 512-GB Flash Cache II module

[kdragon75]

I may be able to get my hands on an old 512-GB Flash Cache II module and would like to know if anyone else has tried this. I don't even know how it will show up but I'm hoping it will present as a block device.
Any thoughts?

 

[Ericloewe]

How old is it? Old enough to predate NVMe? If so, it's probably not going to work.

 

[Chris Moore]

I don't even know how it will show up but I'm hoping it will present as a block device.
Any thoughts?

If it is like some of the Sun/Oracle flash accelerators that have been retired due to age, it may be quite slow by modern standards.
It may work, but not provide any benefit.

 

[c32767a]

I may be able to get my hands on an old 512-GB Flash Cache II module and would like to know if anyone else has tried this. I don't even know how it will show up but I'm hoping it will present as a block device.
Any thoughts?

They are SLC based flash cards. They basically function as what ZFS would see as a combined L2ARC/SLOG in the netapp universe. FlashCacheII would be circa 2013-14 IIRC.

NTAP do use a lot of COTS components for things like FC and Network cards, but I'm pretty sure PAM and FlashCache predate NVMe and use a proprietary FPGA for control/memory interface..

If you already have the card, it can't hurt to try it, but I wouldn't go out and pay money for one. I would be surprised if it worked.

 

[Chris Moore]

There is a Sun\Oracle part of similar function that uses a SATA controller and works, the problem is that it is barely faster than modern hard drives.
I couldn't find any spec for the card you mentioned, but I would agree that it is not worth spending money on, unless we can get speed numbers for it.
If you can get it for free, it doesn't hurt to try, but you must do some testing to see if it is helpful.
Please share your results.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[kdragon75]

Ill see what I can finagle and if I do get it, I'll report back with my findings. Thanks everyone.

 

[kdragon75]

Well the unit I tested was labeled as a PAM II 256GB. I does not show up natively as block storage and lspci provides the following:

Code:

07:00.0 Unassigned class [ffff]: Network Appliance Corporation Device 774c (rev 0f)

I dont think Ill be able to get this enormous card to work unless anyone has some tricks to try. If anyone would like information about the hardware i.e chip numbers etc... let me know. I would be happy to pull them.