LSI Nytro MegaRAID NMR 8100-4i: Experience(s) ?

[Da_maniaC]

Hi guys,

Lately i have been looking at a few options for 'Xtreme' I/O and storage.
I was looking at a solution that involved S-TEC ZeusIOPS SSD's which have pretty remarkable specs.
Then after some mailing inquiries, someone pointed out the Nytro MegaRAID NMR 8100-4i controller.
This controller would then be used together with my current 4 x 120GB Sandisk Extreme II SATA3 array.



The controller has 100GB fast SLC flash on-board which is utilised by 4 Sandforce controllers.
In the specifications it states that the card will look for 'hot data' and store this in the SLC cache to speed up your array.
The card also has a seperate 1GB DDR3 buffer cache.

I was wondering if anyone here has already had some user experience or read about this controller?

Will the SLC cache also hit ~80k IOPS (4K Random read) ?
Will this controller natively support Windows 8.1?
Does anyone know if the controller cache can be put in read-only mode?

The other solution i was looking at (a bit more expensive), involved a 200GB S-tec ZeusIOPS SSD and a LSI Megaraid controller (PCI-e 3.0 x8) which would hit approx. 85k IOPS (4K Random read).

Any thoughts/experiences on the Nytro MegaRAID?

[Buckeye]

Not sure about the 8000 series, if there is any. But we just saw the 7000 series at LSI AIS this week.

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/34091/...013/index.html

[Da_maniaC]

Pretty interesting article, thanks.
What i am actually trying to find out is which of my before mentioned solutions will get me the best results (or if they are actually very close to each other). According to the company advising me, they seem to imply results are only marginally different from each other.

So my point is: S-tec zeusiOPS SSD accompanied by a solid PCIe x8 controller will give me approx. 85k IOPS (4K random read).

I can't seem to find what their alternate solution will do.
(alternate solution being the Nytro Megaraid card with 100 GB flash cache with my current 4xSATA3 Sandisk Extreme II SSD RAID array connected to it).

Are there 6000 or 7000 series Nytro cards with a flash cache like this, that anyone has experience with?