Seagate Nytro XP6500 Flash Accelerator Cards User Guide, Rev. B
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Overview
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1
Overview
This document provides general information and tells you how to use the Seagate® Nytro™ XP6500 Flash Accelerator
card. To configure, monitor, and maintain the card using the software tools provided, refer to the
Seagate® Nytro™
XP6500 Software User Guide.
The Nytro XP6500 card addresses the move toward hyper-convergence where vast computing and storage resources
come together to process massive information loads from the cloud, big data, and hyperscale data centers.
The Nytro XP6500 card combines Flash technology with Seagate’s industry-leading RAID-on-Chip (ROC)
implementation with the advantage of on-board Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). The Nytro XP6500 card
offers the lowest latency flash in the Nytro product portfolio providing consistent, low-response times, even under
heavy I/O loads. The Nytro XP6500 card provides shared writes and chaining of I/Os queued for back end to provide
benefits of serializing back-to-back writes when the back-end port is busy. The shared writes also permit serving write
hits more efficiently by reducing the back-end traffic for updates to same pages.
The Nytro XP6500 card’s buffered fast-path provides ultra-low latency writes through a simple, semi-automatic store
(into DRAM) and forward mechanism. The Nytro XP6500 card includes a virtual drive (VD) with Write Back, no read
ahead, and direct IO policy. RAID 0 with Write Back mode and Write Through mode is supported with Direct I/O (DIO).
The Nytro XP6500 card includes an eight-lane PCI Express® (PCIe®) 3.0 host interface and ROC-based controller with a
DRAM buffer which provides consistent, ultra-low latency.
The following table shows characteristics of the Nytro XP6500 card models.
Features
High performance
—
DRAM buffer for ultra-low write latency and consistent latency over a wide range of I/OPs.
—
High bandwidth and high random-read I/OPs for enhanced system responsiveness and an improved user
experience.
—
Eight on-board Nytro Flash modules present themselves to the operating system as one drive.
—
6Gb/s Nytro Flash module interfaces.
—
TRIM feature support.
Cost-effective
—
Servers can use the Nytro XP6500 as a boot volume, eliminating the need for separate boot drives.
—
Supercaps remove the need for battery maintenance.
Ease-of-use
Table 1 Seagate Nytro XP6500 Card Characteristics Summary
Device Name
Model Number
Raw Capacity
Connector
Flash Controller
NAND Type
Card Style
Controller
Nytro XP6500
XP6500-8A1536LP
1536 GB
X8 PCIe 3.0
SF2582
Enterprise
Multi-Level Cell
(eMLC)
Half Height, Half
Length (HHHL)
SAS3108
Nytro XP6500
XP6500-8A1536FH
1536 GB
X8 PCIe 3.0
SF2582
eMLC
Full Height, Half
Length (FHHL)
SAS3108
Nytro XP6500
XP6500-8A4096LP
4096 GB
X8 PCIe 3.0
SF2582
MLC
HHHL
SAS3108
Nytro XP6500
XP6500-8A4096FH
4096 GB
X8 PCIe 3.0
SF2582
MLC
FHHL
SAS3108
