HPE QK763A Getting Started Guide
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have older product names and model numbers that differ from current models.
QuickSpecs
HP IO Accelerator for HP BladeSystem c-Class
Overview
The HP IO Accelerator is part of a comprehensive solid state storage portfolio. This storage device is targeted for markets &
applications requiring high transaction rates and real-time data access that will benefit from application performance enhancement.
The HP IO Accelerator brings high random I/O performance and low latency access to storage, with the reliability of solid state
technology and its low power and cooling requirements. This product, based on NAND flash technology is available in a mezzanine card
form factor for HP BladeSystem c-Class.
What's New
New 365GB, 785 GB and 1205 GB capacity added which are compatible only with Gen8 HP ProLiant BladeSystem
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RETIRED: Retired products sold prior to the November 1, 2015 separation of Hewlett-Packard Company into Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company and HP Inc. may
have older product names and model numbers that differ from current models.
QuickSpecs
HP IO Accelerator for HP BladeSystem c-Class
Benefits
Solid State Storage Technology can provide customer benefits in several different areas and with different architecture
implementations. It offers high performance and reliability with no moving parts, low power and cooling requirements and improved
environmental tolerance. Solid state storage technology has only recently become a popular topic in the market despite the fact that it
has been used in some enterprise applications for a number of years, especially where the workloads benefit significantly from very
low latency access, and application benefits exceed the costs associated with the solution.
Solid state storage technology benefits are best realized with latency-sensitive environments for both read- and write- intensive
workloads. In addition, significant operational cost savings can be seen by the customer when this technology is applied to the right
applications.
Some use cases are:
Databases that historically were run in memory or across many disk spindles for performance reasons
Seismic data processing
Business Intelligence and Data mining
Real-time financial data processing and verification
Content caching for near-static data for file/web servers
3D animation/rendering
CAD/CAM
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solution
Hypervisor running a large number of virtual machines
Solid state technology can be implemented in various ways within a server. The two most common implementations are as an SSD (in
a SATA or SAS form factor) or as an I/O card attached to the PCI Express bus.
As an I/O card, the IO Accelerator is not a typical SSD; rather it is attached directly to the server's PCI Express fabric to offer extremely
low latency and high bandwidth. The card is also designed to offer high IOPs (I/O Operations Per Second) and nearly symmetric
read/write performance. The IO Accelerator uses a dedicated PCI Express x4 link with nearly 1.3GB/s of usable bandwidth. Each
mezzanine slot in the c-Class BladeSystem offers at least that amount of bandwidth, so by combining cards, you can easily scale the
storage to match your application's bandwidth needs.
The HP IO Accelerator's driver and firmware provide a block-storage interface to the operating system that can easily be used in the
place of legacy disk storage. The storage can be used as a raw disk device, or it can be partitioned and formatted with standard file
systems. You can also combine multiple cards on select models using OS RAID (up to 3 cards with a full-height c-Class blade server) for
increased reliability, capacity or performance in a single blade server.
The Remote Power Cut Module provides a higher level of protection in the event of a catastrophic power loss (for example, a user
accidentally pulls the wrong server blade out of the slot). The Remote Power Cut Module ensures in-flight writes are completed to
NAND flash in these catastrophic scenarios.
NOTE:
For QK761A, QK762A and QK763A models the Power Cut Module is embedded on the board.
NOTE:
QK761A, QK762A QK763A are Type B Mezzanine:
When installed in the ProLiant BL420c Gen8 and BL460c Gen8, it is supported in mezzanine slot 2 for a total of one IO
Accelerator per server. To gain access to mezzanine slot 2, the server blade requires two processors.
When installed in the ProLiant BL465c Gen8, it is supported in mezzanine slot 2 for a total of one IO Accelerator per server.
When installed in the ProLiant BL660c Gen8, it is supported in mezzanine slots 2 and 3 for a total of up to two IO Accelerators
per server.
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QuickSpecs
Models
Models
Models Compatible with Gen8 Blade Servers only
HP 365GB Multi Level Cell IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class
HP 785GB Multi Level Cell IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class
HP 1.2TB Multi Level Cell IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class
HP IO Accelerator for HP BladeSystem c-Class
QK761A
QK762A
QK763A
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RETIRED: Retired products sold prior to the November 1, 2015 separation of Hewlett-Packard Company into Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company and HP Inc. may
have older product names and model numbers that differ from current models.
QuickSpecs
HP IO Accelerator for HP BladeSystem c-Class
Standard Features
NOTE:
For a brief, printer friendly data sheet that describes this product and informs you of the essential capabilities and
specifications, please visit:
What is an IO Accelerator?
IO and Read/Write
Performance
Latency
Supported ProLiant
server blades
www.hp.com
The IO Accelerator is an advanced storage device that uses solid state storage technology directly on the
PCIe bus, assuring high read and write data rates and accelerated application performance. The associated
application performance improvements will have a positive impact on business results and the ability to
make decisions quickly, resulting in significant cost and time savings.
HP IO Accelerator for BladeSystem c-Class offers superior IO performance, and high read and write
performance with MLC models. See detail for each SKU/model.
HP IO Accelerator offers very low latency access to data, in other words a virtually zero seek time
compared to rotating magnetic media. See detail for each SKU/model.
For QK761A, QK762A and QK763A
BL420c Gen8, BL460c Gen8, BL465c Gen8, BL660c Gen8
*
RAM Requirements
*For QK761A, QK762A and QK763A, the IO Accelerator has to be used in full fan configuration for both
c3000 and c7000 enclosures.
For QK761A, QK762A and QK763A*
BL420c Gen8, BL460c Gen8, BL465c Gen8, BL660c Gen8
*For QK761A, QK762A and QK763A, the IO Accelerator has to be used in full fan configuration for both
c3000 and c7000 enclosures.
The HP IO Accelerator drivers use RAM for fast access to the storage metadata. The amount of RAM
required is a fraction of the actual storage in use. It is important to ensure that the driver will have free
RAM available as storage usage is increased. The amount of free RAM required by the driver is directly
related to the size of the blocks used when writing to the drive. When smaller blocks are used, RAM usage
increases. Here are the guidelines for memory needed based on the capacity of IO Accelerator and the
Block Size of the write:
Average
Block Size (bytes)
8,192
4,096
2,048
1,024
512
NOTE:
For IO Accelerator use only, additional RAM needed for system OS and application
Minimum System RAM
requirement for 365GB
Mezz IO Accelerator
1.02 GB
1.9 GB 4.2 GB 6.4 GB
3.8 GB 8.1 GB
7.3 GB
14.5 GB 31.2 GB 47.6 GB
Minimum System RAM
requirement for 785GB
*
Mezz IO Accelerator
2.2 GB 3.4 GB
15.7 GB
Minimum System RAM
requirement for 1.2TB
*
Mezz IO Accelerator
12.4 GB
24 GB
*
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