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S2D Cache device upgrade: Tips and tricks for replacing SSD with NVME



i have done everything based on this ignite conf.recently three of my physical drives labeled missing so i immediately replaced them with new one.on this session from 20 minutes onward someone easily replace a drive.so i also do that but now i got transient errorhere is more detail about my issuecould you please take a look at it and tell what should i do ?i have transient error issue at s2d.could you please take a look at it


We have 4 ssd in each server. one 120gb to boot, one 120gb forced as journal and two 1.6tb as capacity.S2d does not find any suitable drive for cache, do we need nvme or is there any trick to force it to use the 120 GB ?




How To replace S2D Cache device from SSD to NVME




I said that because if your capacity devices are HDD, you need SSD (at least two per node) for cache.You can also implement a full-flash solution. In both case, you need SSD to be supported and to get performance


EBS volumes are exposed as NVMe block devices on instances built on the Nitro System. When you attach a volume to your instance, you include a device name for the volume. This device name is used by Amazon EC2. The block device driver for the instance assigns the actual volume name when mounting the volume, and the name assigned can be different from the name that Amazon EC2 uses.


EBS uses single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to provide volume attachments on Nitro-based instances using the NVMe specification. These devices rely on standard NVMe drivers on the operating system. These drivers typically discover attached devices by scanning the PCI bus during instance boot, and create device nodes based on the order in which the devices respond, not on how the devices are specified in the block device mapping. Additionally, the device name assigned by the block device driver can be different from the name specified in the block device mapping.


You can also run the ebsnvme-id command to map the NVMe device disk number to an EBS volume ID and device name. By default, all EBS NVMe devices are enumerated. You can pass a disk number to enumerate information for a specific device. Ebsnvme-id is included in the latest AWS provided Windows Server AMIs located in C:\PROGRAMDATA\AMAZON\Tools.


The latest AWS Windows AMIs contain the AWS NVMe driver that is required by instance types that expose EBS volumes as NVMe block devices. However, if you resize your root volume on a Windows system, you must rescan the volume in order for this change to be reflected in the instance. If you launched your instance from a different AMI, it might not contain the required AWS NVMe driver. If your instance does not have the latest AWS NVMe driver, you must install it. For more information, see AWS NVMe drivers for Windows instances.


Windows Server 2016 enables to use a mix of NVMe + SSD + HDD disks to obtain a triple tier storage layered solution. Storage Spaces Direct implements a cache mechanism called Storage Bus Cache to support the read + write cache when using HDD or just the write cache when using NVMe flash + SATA SSD. The cache devices are always the fastest storage devices. For example, when using SSD and HDD, the SSD will be the cache devices and HDD the capacity devices. When using NVMe flash and SATA SSD, the NVMe flash will be the cache devices and the SSD the capacity devices, as in the Ability S2D200.


The Supermicro solution is pre-validated/certified and optimized for running an Azure Stack HCI cluster, starting from 2 server nodes and support up to 16 nodes in a cluster. Each server node in the cluster is equipped with latest Intel Xeon Scalable processors, DDR4 memory, NVMe as caching devices, with flexible options of different drive combinations including All-NVMe, NVMe+HDD, NVMe+SSD, NVMe+SSD+HDD, and RDMA enabled high-speed networks.


Depending on your needs, you can design S2D systems with different characteristics. If you have modest IOPS and throughput needs, a mix of large HDDs for capacity and SSDs for caching and tiering would be appropriate. If you have high performance needs, you should consider an all-flash system. Also, realize that on a cost-per-GB basis, SSDs are cheaper than NVMe devices. However, if throughput is your aim, NVMe is more cost effective on a dollar-per-IOPS basis. It's also possible to combine all three types of storage media in a single S2D cluster. Note that S2D will automatically enable faster storage for caching. This cache dynamically binds to HDDs, adapting to changes in available disks or SSD drive failures. Data flows over the software storage bus between the disks in each node. This effectively treats all the storage as if it was in a single server by pooling it together.


Why the Intel SSD 750 Series? They have Power Loss Protection built-in. Storage Spaces Direct will not allow any cache devices hold any data in the storage's local cache if it is volatile. What becomes readily discoverable is that writing straight through to NAND is a very _slow_ process relative to having that cache power protected!


I found out about the heating issues before buying my first M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD drive (which was the 512 GB Samsung 950 Pro). I purchased it with a heat sink, but after some consideration, I decided against removing the label and voiding the warranty. Instead, I went ahead and placed my unit in an open area of my large tower case with good airflow, making sure that air from my case fan directly reaches the unit and cools it off. The device worked well, but under heavy loads it would still heat up and throttle. To reduce the chance of any potential failure and resulting data loss, I decided to only store my operating system on the drive and use it for caching and my Lightroom catalogs, which get frequently backed up anyway. I did the same with two other M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD drives, although they were the newer Samsung 960 Pro versions. 2ff7e9595c


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