Case Study

Western Digital® and Xinnor® Team up to Power the Cheetah
RAID Raptor Platform
Executive Summary
To meet the demanding performance requirements of Edge applications involving
sequential operations and multithreaded access for capturing, processing, andstoring vital data, it is essential to utilize storage systems that can deliver exceptional
performance. These applications encompass various use cases such as video
surveillance, streaming, data logging and capturing, autonomous vehicles, andruggedized storage for industrial and military purposes.

Challenge
Provide RAID protection without the performanceconstraints typically associated with traditional
RAID for Edge applications.

SolutionXinnor xiRAID and Ultrastar DC SN650
NVMe™ SSD drives seamlessly meet Cheetah
RAID Raptor platform specifications withoutcompromising performance.

Key Results
The remarkable efficiency of the xiRAID engine
adds performance and protection to the Ultrastar
DC SN650 NVMe SSD drives to create a powerfulstorage solution for Edge applications withoutcompromising performance.

In this document, we will assess the performance of the Western Digital Ultrastar® DC
SN650 drives when combined with Xinnor’s software RAID on a Cheetah RAID Raptorplatform. The goal is to determine whether this integrated solution fulfills the highperformance demands set by these Edge applications.

Test Objectives
1. Drive performance (RAW): Non-RAID raw performance of the Ultrastar DC SN650
NVMe™ drives.
2. Drive performance (RAID): RAID performance using the xiRAID engine to evaluate
overhead.
3. Filesystem performance: EXT4 and XFS filesystems performance comparison
during sequential write operations to determine which one can process up to 4 streamsof uncompressed 4K video.

Test Platform
For our setup, we used the Cheetah RAID Raptor platform populated with 12 Western
Digital Ultrastar DC SN650 NVMe™ enterprise SSDs protected by Xinnor’s software
RAID (xiRAID). The Raptor platform features 3 hot-pluggable cannisters, each of whichhost 4 drives configured in RAID 5.

Xinnor xiRAID

xiRAID is a software RAID solution designed from the ground up for NVMe
performance. It provides a high level of flexibility while keeping host resource
utilization to an unprecedented minimum. Specifically designed to handle the high levelof parallelism of NVMe devices, xiRAID eliminates the bottleneck caused by ‘traditional’
RAID controllers and allows delivery of up to 97% of raw device performance.

Ultrastar DC SN650 NVMe SSDs
Ultrastar DC SN650 NVMe SSDs are optimized for cloud and scale-out workloads providing higher QoS consistency and superior
storage utilization for object storage as emerging workloads for big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasing in sizeand complexity.

Cheetah RAID Raptor
Cheetah RAID’s Raptor Platform is a powerful and high-performance 2U server that is specifically designed to meet the unique demandsof the media and entertainment industry, as well as military and autonomous vehicle applications, even in harsh and challenging
environments.

Test Hardware• CPU: AMD™ EPYC™ 7443P 24-Core Processor; Thread(s) per core: 1; Core(s) per socket: 24• Motherboard: Supermicro® H12SSL-i• RAM: Micron® DIMM DDR4 Synchronous Registered (Buffered) 3200 MHz, 256GiB• Drives: 12 * Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN650, 7.68TB1• OS: Oracle® Linux® 8.4, Kernel: Linux 5.4.17-2102.203.6.el8uek.x86_64• RAID: Engine: xiRAID 4.0, Level: 5, Stripe: 128K		

Drive Performance (RAW) Non-RAID
Performance tests were conducted on the drives using the FIO utility. Prior to performance tests, preconditioning was carried out
using the following FIO pattern:
iodepth=16, numjobs=1, rw=write, size=100%, ioengine=libaio, blocksize=128k, direct=1, loops=2
Block device tests were conducted on each disk simultaneously using the following FIO pattern:
ioengine=libaio, rw=write, bs=1M, iodepth=64, runtime=300, direct=1
For sequential write and read operations, the block size was set to 1M.
The test results are as follows:
NVMe

Seq. Write (GB\s)Seq. Read (GB\s)nvme0n1

1,98

6,33

nvme1n1

1,95

6,41

nvme2n1

2,02

6,32

nvme3n1

2,02

6,33

nvme4n1

2,01

6,31

nvme5n1

2,02

6,34

nvme6n1

1,97

6,41

nvme7n1

1,96

6,35

nvme8n1

1,98

6,37

nvme9n1

1,95

6,35

nvme10n1

2,03

6,36

nvme11n1

1,98

6,34

Drive Performance (RAID): Xinnor xiRAID
To test the performance of the xiRAID engine, we created three RAID 5 arrays consisting of 4 disks each.
RAID options were tuned as follows:• Scheduling was enabled, merge was disabled by default.
Tests were conducted using the FIO utility with the same configuration as for the drive tests. Block size was changed to 384K for sequentialwrite tests.
The test results are as follows:

RAID efficiency is calculated as percentage of the theoretical maximum performance considering the RAID 5 impact:

Filesystem Performance: EXT4 vs XFS
To compare performance on different file systems during sequential write operations, a full-size LUN was created on RAID, formatted to the EXT4 file systemand tests were performed. Each test ensured the write operations could provide sufficient performance to process up to four streams of uncompressed 4K
video.
Following the preconditioning, RAID was recreated, and the full-size LUN was formatted to the XFS filesystem and tested again.

The following scenario was executed to compare filesystems:
1.

Preconditioning of the drives.

2.

RAID and volume creation.

3.

Testing with frametest.

4.

Long frametest run until the drives have been fully written.

5.

Repeating the test with frametest.

Frametest parameters were as follows: -w 4k -t 4 -n 9000 (write 4k quality in 4 threads for 9000 frames).Conclusion
The performance tests conducted on the SN650 NVMe drives have showcased results that are in line with the stated specifications. Furthermore, the tests
conducted on the RAID block devices have revealed that the performance of the NVMe drives, when integrated into the RAID array, closely aligns with thecombined performance of the individual drives. This indicates the remarkable efficiency of the xiRAID engine. In addition, the volume formatted with the EXT4
filesystem exhibits superior sequential write performance, even after the drives have been fully written. This observation emphasizes the resilient performanceof the storage system, even under demanding conditions.
Based on these findings, we can conclude that Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN650 drives protected by Xinnor xiRAID software RAID and operated in Cheetah
RAID Raptor platform, deliver sufficient performance to handle up to 4 streams of uncompressed 4k video, meeting the requirements of most Edge applications.
About Western Digital
Western Digital is on a mission to unlock the potential of data by harnessing the possibility to use it. With Flash and HDD franchises, underpinned by advancements in memory technologies, we create breakthrough innovations and powerful data storage solutions that enable the world to actualize its aspirations. Coreto our values, we recognize the urgency to combat climate change and have committed to ambitious carbon reduction goals approved by the Science Based
Targets initiative. Learn more about Western Digital and the Western Digital, SanDisk® and WD® brands at www.westerndigital.com
About Xinnor
Xinnor is an Israeli-based software development company that specializes in creating innovative data storage solutions. Its main product is xiRAID, a patented
software RAID technology that delivers exceptional performance. xiRAID is a product of a decade of math research, unique algorithms of data protection andin-depth knowledge of modern CPU operation. Although it works with all types of storage devices, xiRAID really shines when deployed together with NVMe or
NVMe-oF™ devices. xiRAID is the only software solution in the market capable of driving up to 97% of raw device performance in computationally heavy RAID
configurations, while maintaining a very modest load on the host CPU and low memory footprint. You can learn about Xinnor at www.xinnor.io.
About Cheetah RAIDFounded in 2006, it has positioned itself as a leader in building high-performance, small form factor NVMe servers for the Media and Entertainment, Autonomous Vehicle markets and US Navy. Its solutions are ideal for use in applications where space is limited, and performance is essential. Cheetah’s small form
factor NVMe servers are designed to provide high performance and reliability while taking up less space. You can learn about Cheetah Raid Storage at www.
cheetahraid.com.

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July 2023