Nytro DM Controller Card Overview

Nytro DM Controller Card Overview

ATTENTION  Throughout this document, these are the convention of the usage of important terms:

ATTENTION  Controller card/controller/Nytro controller card: This term refers to the Nytro DM controller card.

SSD: This term refers to Serviceable Flash Modules (SFMs).

Nytro Virtual Drive: Virtual drive (VD) created with write policy: Write Back, Cached, and No Read Ahead properties, and VD made of only Nytro Serviceable Flash Modules (SFMs).

SuperCap: Another type of BBU.

NOTE  All of the MegaRAID Storage Manager menu options can be accessed by using the Go To menu or Right-click > Controller.

NOTE  Nytro DM is only compatible with LSI SFMs.

LSI® Nytro™ DM Application Acceleration Card for DAS combines Flash technology with LSI’s industry leading RAID-on-Chip (ROC) implementation with the advantage of on-board Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). The controller improves the storage performance while retaining the current investment in direct-attached storage (DAS). These cards are built upon the enterprise hardened RAID technology and industry leading Flash storage controller solutions. The controller reduces write latency by efficiently using DRAM. The controller provides DRAM cache offload support and DRAM Write Back support. The controller helps you create a Nytro DM VD with Write Back, cached, and no read ahead properties. The supported RAID levels are: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10 with Write Back and Write Through modes. The controller supports LSI SFMs that you can plug in and install, and flash firmware.

The controller is easy to use with transparent access to applications. This industry proven LSI solution enables many applications enjoy the performance improvement seamlessly from the controller without any application or file system modifications.

The Nytro DM controller is based on LSISAS2208 RAID On-a-Chip (ROC). This device is compliant with the Fusion-MPT™ architecture and provides a PCI Express x8 interface.

This document describes how to configure, monitor, and maintain the LSI® Nytro™ DM Application Acceleration Card, using the MegaRAID Storage Manager application, Pre-boot CLI (PCLI), WebBIOS configuration utility (WebBIOS CU), Storage Command utility (StorCLI), and MegaRAID command line interface (MegaCLI).