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Overview of Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC)

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Content Type Product Information & Documentation

Article ID 000089796

Last Reviewed 11/07/2023

Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) is an enterprise RAID solution that unleashes the performance of NVMe* SSDs. Intel® VROC is enabled by a feature in Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors called Intel® Volume Management Device (Intel® VMD), an integrated controller inside the CPU PCIe root complex. NVMe SSDs are directly connected to the CPU, allowing the full performance potential of fast storage devices to be realized. Intel® VROC enables these benefits without the complexity, cost, and power consumption of traditional hardware RAID host bus adapter (HBA) cards placed between the drives and the CPU.

Intel® VROC is a complete RAID solution that includes:

High performance due to direct connect of SSDs.
Platform integrated storage controller functions provided by Intel® VMD.
Boot and Data RAID.
Scalable to many devices and RAID arrays.
Support for SATA and NVMe RAID arrays.

Product Brief

Read the product brief to learn more about Intel® VROC

Powered by Intel® Xeon® Processors

As processing power continues to scale, high-bandwidth access to low-latency storage is critical to realizing the true potential of the CPU. Intel® VMD and Intel® VROC are features of Intel® Xeon® processors that enable a seamless transition to fast NVMe storage to maximize CPU access to data, without a disruption in storage functionality.

Intel® Xeon® Processors

Learn more about the product details of Intel® Xeon® processors.

Performance Highlights

Intel® VROC is an integrated RAID solution that scales with NVMe SSDs to deliver extraordinary performance, over 5.7M IOPS. Intel® VROC performance is consistently better than RAID HBA, delivering up to 66% more IOPS, up to 40% lower latency and up to 62% better power efficiency.

See more information in the following resources:

Supported Configurations

Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU supports several SSD and system configurations. This information covers what the Intel® VROC software can support. Platform level constraints may supersede the information below.

See more details in the following resource:

Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Supported Configurations

Features

Isolate Error Handling: Intel® VMD isolates SSD error and event handling from the operating system to help reduce system crashes and reboots.
Enterprise Reliability: Increased protection from data loss and corruption in various failure scenarios such as unexpected power loss, even when a volume is degraded.
Extended Management Tools: Pre-OS and OS management includes HII, CLI, email alerts, and a Windows GUI, all supporting NVMe and SATA controls.
Boot RAID: Redundancy for OS images directly off the CPU with pre-OS configuration options for platform set-up.
High Performance Storage: Connect NVMe SSDs directly to the CPU for full bandwidth storage connections.
Out Of Band Management: Retrieve drive inventory, monitor drive/RAID volume state and trigger RAID create/delete and LED management.
SED Key Management: Secure sensitive data volumes with Self Encrypting Drives and boot from a RAID volume or a single drive.

What you should know about the Intel® VROC package

System vendors may customize the Intel® VROC package for their specific platforms. Reference your OEM for a full list of available feature sets. If any of the information in these resources conflict with the support information provided by the platform OEM, the platform documentation and configurations take precedence.

License Required

Intel® VROC is a licensed product available on certain Intel® Xeon® processors. Product functionality must be enabled by server system vendors. Contact your vendor for purchasing details. Licensing implementations and options may vary.

See more details in the following resource: