SuperVolume on Servers
OVERVIEW   SuperVolume is a sophisticated yet elegant solution to the disk I/O bottleneck. Employing a patented hybrid cache, it mirrors an entire disk partition or volume in system memory (RAM). SuperVolume is implemented as a storage volume filter driver, residing in the storage stack just above the storage volume drivers.
How it works   SuperVolume reserves a portion of system memory that is the same size as its associated storage partition or volume. This area of memory is a kind of cache, and SuperVolume maintains an exact image of the associated partition or volume in the cache. All data residing in the partition or volume is also present in the cache. The file system, drive letter, and all other attributes of the original partition or volume are preserved.
    SuperVolume intercepts read and write requests to the disk partition or volume. All read requests can be fulfilled by reading from the cache, not from the disk. This results in read performance at the same level as a RAM disk. However, unlike a RAM disk, the data is safely stored on a physical disk.
Write-through mode   SuperVolume supports write-through and write-deferred modes. In write-through mode, writes are immediately sent to the cache and to the partition or volume. This eliminates the possibility of data loss in SuperVolume due to a system crash or power failure.
Write-deferred mode   In write-deferred mode, writes are immediately sent to the cache only, and then to the disk at a later time. This mode of operation results in read- and write-performance similar to that of RamDisk. SuperSpeed Software recommends that you enable the write-deferred (or lazy-write) feature ONLY on systems equipped with an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).
What does all this achieve?   The elimination of disk latencies without the loss of data persistence. Disk-intensive services and applications that store their data on the SuperVolume partition or volume, can reduce their execution or response times by factors of five, ten or more.
When to use  

SuperVolume is a appropriate choice for the following requirements:

  1. Data persistence (no or very low risk of data loss).
  2. The size of the data files is less than available system memory.
  3. The data files are or can be located on a disk partition or volume with a size that is less than available system memory.
    A key prerequisite of SuperVolume is a disk partition or volume that is small enough to fit into the available physical memory. For example, a server with 8GB of system memory can support up to 7 GB for SuperVolume. Therefore, in this example, a disk partition or volume up to 7 GB must be available on the system for SuperVolume to mirror.

Support for NUMA

  

Windows Server 2003 SP1 and later operating systems provide special support for machines with a non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA). When active on such platforms, the memory manager for SuperVolume examines the processor and memory affinities reported by Windows and the ACPI SRAT, and then optimizes physical memory allocations across the described NUMA nodes. The NUMA support in SuperVolume greatly improves the speed of memory allocations and equalizes the distribution of cache allocations among the NUMA nodes. Currently, NUMA support does not include the ability to build caches on specific nodes.
See also:   Release Notes
Configuration
Installation instructions.
Uninstall instructions.
    To consult with our staff, call 1-877-388-7733 or e-mail us at consultants@superspeed.com. Click here to download fully-functional trial software.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS  
• Windows Server 2003 - all editions, 32- and 64-bit (x64 and Itanium-based)
Processor (CPU) Support  
• 300 MHz processor or higher
• All Intel and AMD Pentium-class platforms
• Intel 64-bit, EM64T processor families
• AMD 64-bit: Athlon 64, Opteron
• All SMP configurations of the above that are supported by Windows™
(see table below)
Memory Support  
• Minimum: 512MB RAM
• Recommended: 1 GB or greater
• Maximum: as per amount recognized by Microsoft Windows™.
• Types: all including SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, Rambus etc.
Supported
32-bit Hardware		  
Operating system edition (32-bit) Maximum
RAM*		 Approx.
Maximum Volume Size		 CPUs*
Windows Server 2003 Web 2 GB 1.5 GB 2
Windows Server 2003 Small Business 4 GB 3 GB 4
Windows Server 2003 Standard
 4 GB 3 GB 4
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
 64 GB 63 GB 8
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter
 64 GB 63 GB 32
Supported
64-bit Hardware		  
Operating system edition (64-bit) Maximum
RAM*		 Approx.
Maximum
Volume Size		 CPUs
Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard - x64 32 GB 31 GB 4
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise - x64 1 TB 63 GB 8
Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter - x64 1 TB 63 GB 64
* Hardware support limit of operating system
Disk & File Systems Supported:  
• Basic and Dynamic types
• FAT, FAT32, NTFS
Other considerations:  
• 16 MB free disk space for installation
• A disk volume (partition) that will fit into the available physical memory that is targeted for use by SuperVolume
PURCHASE:    
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SuperVolume
Operating System Edition Version CPU# Price  
Windows™ Server 2003 Web 3.0.2 1-2 $199.95
Small Business 3.0.2 1-2 $349.95
Standard 32-bit 3.0.2 1-2 $424.95
3.0.2 4 $999.95
Standard 64-bit 3.0.2 1-2 $524.95
3.0.2 4 $1,099.95
Enterprise 3.0.2 All * see below
Datacenter 3.0.2 All * see below
* For a quote on these system configurations, contact one of our performance consultants for product evaluation and pricing.
Call 1-877-388-7733 option 2
email: consultants@superspeed.com
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SuperSpeed LLC is the owner of the following U.S. Patents 5577226, 5606681, 5918244, 6370615, 6629201, 6651136, 7017013, 7039767, 7111129, 7475186 and other patents are pending.

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