Y'know, I'd like to know too!

 

Just signed up, and is a key factor! Looking to move away from truenas, and being able to put my two 6.4TB fusionio drives to use in tiered/usefully cached storage is a big factor!

I just picked up a FusionIO 2 drive, and have finished reading this thread. 
I am waiting on a MOVE to finish so I can try the iodrive.

Does anyone have an update on this. I was able to acquire several drives and would like to use them as cache in my server. 

I've been trying to figure this out, so I thought I would post what I have so far:

 

• There is a discord forum for fusionIO, here.
• This tutorial gave me some info, sounds like have to get source code, build a new kernel. 
• This is the github source code link, here
• Need to build a custom kernal for Unraid, here (unraid uses slackware, I believe).

 

My thought was to build a Slackware VM, here, and figure this out, build the kernel.  (Then could I copy the kernel to the usb boot drive? dont know yet). Be forewarned, Slackware is a bit of different animal, only CLI, and there was a lot of prep to convert (deb packages) to be used.

A lot of gaps in the instructions, as I am primarily ubuntu user.

Googling on how to get fusionIO to work with Unraid, you might come across threads about drivers and paths, which has been requested and released.
I think we need a github project for fusionIO + Unraid so that people can contribute to this effort.
as of this post, there are still lots of fusionIO boards on ebay. They are not the fastest, but for the home brew server crowd, this is a great, high-endurance drive I would love to get working.
Hope this helps somebody

Edited September 28, 20214 yr by Robc390

16 minutes ago, Robc390 said:

fusionIO

Is this still a thing since NVME drives got faster and more reliable too, since fusionIO is basically dead...

 

17 minutes ago, Robc390 said:

My thought was to build a Slackware VM, here, and figure this out, build the kernel.  (Then could I copy the kernel to the usb boot drive? dont know yet). Be forewarned, Slackware is a bit of different animal, only CLI, and there was a lot of prep to convert (deb packages) to be used.

A lot of gaps in the instructions, as I am primarily ubuntu user.

You can use my Unraid-Kernel-Helper container to build your own customized version from unRAID but keep in mind I will deprecate the container in the near future because you can add basically everything via plugins since 6.9.0-beta35.

 

18 minutes ago, Robc390 said:

I think we need a github project for fusionIO + Unraid so that people can contribute to this effort.

From what I know a user customized the Kernel Helper somewhere on Github but it doesn't work for newer versions of unRAID because 6.9.2 uses Kernel 5.10.28 and the FusionIO Github repos, at least the ones that I know, only support Kernel versions up to 5.0.0

 

21 minutes ago, Robc390 said:

there are still lots of fusionIO boards on ebay.

But aren't they too expensive for what they offer in times of really speedy and reliable NVMEs?

14 minutes ago, ich777 said:

Is this still a thing since NVME drives got faster and more reliable too, since fusionIO is basically dead...

 

You can use my Unraid-Kernel-Helper container to build your own customized version from unRAID but keep in mind I will deprecate the container in the near future because you can add basically everything via plugins since 6.9.0-beta35.

 

From what I know a user customized the Kernel Helper somewhere on Github but it doesn't work for newer versions of unRAID because 6.9.2 uses Kernel 5.10.28 and the FusionIO Github repos, at least the ones that I know, only support Kernel versions up to 5.0.0

 

But aren't they too expensive for what they offer in times of really speedy and reliable NVMEs?

Viable? Absolutely (IMO). I also mine Chia crypto, which chews up ssd's like crazy.

Paying for a high endurance ssd is more expensive compared to the used fusionIO market (your millage will vary).
I got a 1.2TB fusionduo (really 2x 650GB) for about $100 bucks.
I also am trying this out to expand my tech knowledge and challenge. 
I'd likely use nvme on a riser card for unraid cache, and the fusionIO to much out Chia crypto plots; if its going to destroy the drive, might as well be an old one. 

15 minutes ago, Robc390 said:

the fusionIO to much out Chia crypto plots; if its going to destroy the drive, might as well be an old one. 

As said above you can always build the FusionIO modules with the Kernel-Helper, simply search the Unraid-Kernel-Helper thread about FusionIO and you will find more information and maybe also the Github repo where he customized the Unraid-Kernel-Helper, but I don't think this won't work on newer unRAID versions because of the above said issues.

 

The main issue with this drives is that they are not actively maintained by someone, correct my if I'm wrong...

Also FusionIO was acquired by SanDisk.

1 hour ago, Robc390 said:

I also mine Chia crypto, which chews up ssd's like crazy.

I've seen reports on the chia mining thread here on the Unraid forums that it's not needed or even advantageous to mine directly to SSD.

I am searching for "Unraid-Kernel-Helper", and only threads I am finding are other posts where you said to check out Unraid-Kernel-Helper.

It's been a while since I played with this since I ended up selling my fusionIO drive in favor of U.2 NVMEs, but ich777 is correct. You can absolutely use his Docker container to build the kernel modules as a plugin, but it'll be a massive pain to keep up with releases. Here's my repository with the build script I was using for testing. YMMV: https://github.com/juchong/unraid-fusionio-build

Edited September 28, 20214 yr by juchong
English

11 hours ago, Robc390 said:

Unraid-Kernel-Helper

 

5 hours ago, ich777 said:

 

Thanks, I will dig into this.

Hi

 

i would also be happy about fusion iodrive driver

I have this:
Mass storage controller: SanDisk ioDrive2 (rev 04)

HP ioDrive 2 768GB

 

the current ones are here:
these also run with the latest Linux

https://github.com/RemixVSL/iomemory-vsl

 

 

the drive also works great with windows 10, debian, truenas usw.
the drive has an write endurance of 11 petabyte ! 
and you get this drives for 50-100 bucks on ebay with garantie and only used with 5-10%

Edited January 29, 20233 yr by igi

Bump for this thread

I have the Sandisk's flavor of the FusionIO drive, SX350 SSD (SDFADCMOS-6T40-SF1 6.4TB)
Its a 6.4TB drive that has great cost per GB, and performance is 2755/2194 MB/s its pretty good 6TB drive 
I've picked up a few for $250 each

They work great on everything except UNRAID as a Drive that UNRAID can use.

The fun thing is UNRAID sees the PCI device in System Devices as
"[1aed:3001] 04:00.0 Mass storage controller: SanDisk ioMemory FHHL"

In UNRAID I can pass it through as a PCI device to a VM (TrueNAS, Windows, ESXI, RHEL) install the drivers from Lenovo's site and the drive works.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/search?query=Fusion ioMemory SX300 %2F SX350 PCIe SSD Driver&SearchType=Customer search&searchLocation=Masthead

So I was hoping that since even Windows 11 works with these drives that it would be really great if the drivers could be added to UNRAID so I can free up some drive bays in my Supermicro system we can use them on our favorite home media server hypervisor. 

While I could just run an WHOLE VM just to host the drive as a network share. It would be nice to not have to do that. 

Appreciate it.

Also side note,
I was wondering is there was anyway to like crowd fund/donate for specific features to be added?
Cuz I'de be willing to throw $100 into a pot to help facilitate adding this software for this hardware into UNRAID. I've had my Pro license for like 7 years and no complaints so I don't mind throwing some cash at this so that us weirdos with weird enterprise hardware can have more hardware support.
Thanks.

Bump on this I also have these drives and would love to use as a cache drive!! These drives are great even compared to the latest nvme drives! 

Edited January 19, 20242 yr by marcel1267

Welp, I had been using this on the old Unraid 6.8, but finally upgraded to 6.12 and with the amount of time I want to spend trying again, it seems you can no longer compile a module for the kernel anymore? So annoying, just going to move on until I decide to replace unraid. 

 

In the mean time, I just want to find a solition that works - does anyone know or can confirm if Intel P3520  or P3600 series will work within unraid? These intel drives seem to support the NVME command set, so maybe ? ... Or any other sort of "durable" MLC NAND flash ?  ( do NOT want to use an actual "NVME drive on a pci-express adapter as those seem far too fragile, overheat, poop out, wear out easily.). I enjoy using enterprise class hardware that will outlive its useful life and still work for years...lol.

 

Speaking of which my 3 fusion-io adapters are all still over 95% health, and at least work in Windows. 

What a fantastic durable product. 

 

thanks,

Jonathan

Edited January 6, 20251 yr by jc179
update info

hello

that's why i use the fusion drive under windows,
and in the Unraid server I now have a SSD WD Red SN700 - nvme
(1TB for 100,- with 2000 TBW and 5 years Warranty)

 

 

ich777  - They have a few different series;

ioDrive
ioDrive DUO
ioDrive2 
Probably more. As these get cheaper it might be possible to get you one, I saw some 640gb ones on kijiji here not too long ago.

 

igi - Yes, under windows they're working well, and with VMWare ESX too, perhaps what I should have done a long time ago instead of going the other path I chose to at the time... 

 

The TBW lifespan of the black SN700 isn't very good for my use though;

 

ENDURANCE (TBW):

2TB: 1,200

1TB: 600 

500GB: 300

250GB: 200

(https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-black-ssd/product-brief-wd-black-sn770-nvme-ssd.pdf)

 

So Fill up the 1 TB, 600 times and it has already reached the end of what they will cover in 5 year warranty, pretty easy to do that in 2 years in a server like environment, not so good for a server, workload depending that is. Even if it was 2000 TBW, that's only 1TB written 2000 times. With heavy swap and VM-IO this goes quickly. 

 

These 'enterprise' drives are rated to write in the PBW - petabyte, 3 extra 0's , pretend for a moment the 1TB drive was rated at just 6 PBW, then you'd have ~half a million full write cycles vs 600 before it hits the rated drive lifetime. 

 

I think I might just try a P3600 and report back weather it works or not... I am leaning more towards a working situation than not at the moment...  

 

Jonathan

Edited January 7, 20251 yr by jc179

Thanks to @ich777 for the breakthrough that got my Fusion-io ioDrive2 up and running in Unraid 7.2.5.

I was able to compile the RemixVSL (iomemory-vsl) driver against kernel 6.12.85-Unraid using the ghcr.io/ich777/unraid_kernel:gcc_14.2.0 Docker container.

The card is now working natively in Unraid as /dev/fioa .

My drive turned out to be essentially unused, with only about 4 MB of lifetime writes.

I documented the full step-by-step process, including:

• Ubuntu Server 22.04 diagnostics and firmware update

• Driver selection (RemixVSL VSL3)

• Kernel module compilation

• Persistent module loading

• Filesystem creation and mounting

• Benchmark testing

Full technical guide (PDF)

Fusionio Drive installation in unraid.pdf