StoreMI and Optane Memory 32GB?

[VirtualLarry]

Seems like this would be a potent combination for an AMD B450/X470 rig, no?

What are the limitations on using StoreMI? I think (not sure), that it's built-in to every B450 and X470 mobo BIOS/UEFI, right? And that you just need to load the Windows' driver? (What about Linux support? And dual-boot scenarios?)

Combined with a modern 4TB HDD, this should provide plenty of decent performance and storage space, without the down-sides of having to manage storage manually between an SSD and a HDD.

I set up a friend with a rig with an SSD for OS, and a 1TB HDD, and when the SSD died, they lost nearly everything, because they never even bothered to copy anything important to the HDD. It was like they were oblivious to the fact that they had two drives to use. I suspect many non-technical users are similar in behavior.

This makes me want to upgrade my mobo, just to be able to use it, and try it out.

However, I don't own any Optane Memory M.2 sticks, but I have a 512GB SX6000 Adata M.2 NVMe drive sitting in the box here.

I guess StoreMI is a tiered storage system, not just a caching system, so that I would be able to use both in a rig effectively?

I recall seeing an AMD graphic in another thread, that showed a price/performance benefit with StoreMI, and a "16GB SSD", which was probably code-speak for an Optane Memory drive.

 

[cbn]

What are the limitations on using StoreMI?

The fast tier is limited to 256GB (can be NVMe or SATA SSD. Single drive).The capacity tier is limited to single SATA or SAS drive (can be SSD or HDD). Max volume size (I think) is 10 TB.

RAM cache is limited to 2GB.

I think (not sure), that it's built-in to every B450 and X470 mobo BIOS/UEFI, right?

It is, but remember it (just like the Intel Optane system acceleration software) works only with Windows.

 

[cbn]

One thing I am wondering about is whether or not StoreMI pins files or not? And if does pin files what files are pinned?

 

[XMan]

Linus Tech Tips actually did a video on it with mixed results. Seems like StoreMi benefits from larger SSDs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWXBo0bb_dU

 

[cbn]

Linus Tech Tips actually did a video on it with mixed results. Seems like StoreMi benefits from larger SSDs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWXBo0bb_dU

I wonder if an "Optane Mode" is possible where the AMD Software (Enmotus FuzeDrive) detects an Optane drive and could selectively choose to auto-tier only the small files.

If so, perhaps this would eliminate some, most (or maybe even all) of the hard drive thrashing reported when the following test procedure was used:

 

[Nutzzz]

One thing I am wondering about is whether or not StoreMI pins files or not? And if does pin files what files are pinned?

No, StoreMI (and FuzeDrive client) doesn't do file pinning, but the server edition (FuzeDrive VirtualSSD) does, apparently.

I wonder if an "Optane Mode" is possible where the AMD Software (Enmotus FuzeDrive) detects an Optane drive and could selectively choose to auto-tier only the small files.

No, it operates on blocks of data below the filesystem layer, so it has normally has no knowledge of files (the server product feature notwithstanding). But there's a lot of tuning options available with the command line interface, so I'm sure a good balance could be found for smaller drives. Ask Enmotus.

 

[cbn]

One thing I am wondering about is whether or not StoreMI pins files or not? And if does pin files what files are pinned?

No, StoreMI (and FuzeDrive client) doesn't do file pinning, but the server edition (FuzeDrive VirtualSSD) does, apparently.
.

Yes, that is right. (Only the server version has manual file pinning).

However, I do wonder if certain files are pinned by Enmotus. (ie, files the user has no control over.)

I would be particularly interested in whether or not StoreMI pins the page file or not?

 

[Nutzzz]

I would be particularly interested in whether or not StoreMI pins the page file or not?

Like I said, ask Enmotus. They've been very helpful to me when I had issues.

 

[cbn]

Regarding the page file....

......I am assuming a person could also format the 32GB optane drive into two drive letters and then manually assign the page file to one of the two drive letters not being used by the StoreMI software.

With that noted, not all virtual memory in windows gets sent to the page file.

 

[Nutzzz]

FuzeDrive/StoreMI grabs the whole disk. The only way you can split off some of your fast drive is if your fast disk is larger than the max capacity (256GB for StoreMI, varies for FuzeDrive depending on which license you purchased). In that case, it'll create a second non-tiered virtual drive from the remainder. But you can't choose to make a carveout arbitrarily or by partitioning.

In any case, 32GB is probably too small for a lot of use cases; I wouldn't want to give it even less to work with just for a pagefile, where, assuming Windows and FuzeDrive/StoreMI are both doing their jobs, they should both agree that it's hot data and it'll either be on the fast drive already or be on its way there.

 

[cbn]

After finding out about the ability of StoreMI to change read i/o promotion policy from this post at Reddit perhaps 32GB Optane could work better at tiering than we originally thought.

The default aggressive read io promotion policy works better with bigger and fast drives. It judges promotions once every 2 seconds and promotes stuff as soon as you touch it with a read iop. Setting it to normal or slow can help if the drive is really small, but I think about 200gb or even 120gb should be good enough for very normal use cases.

With that noted I still wonder how page outs would be handled?