This post comes from Vadim Tkachenko at the MySQL Performance Blog.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on new Fusion-io ioDrive2 Duo card. So I decided to run the same series of tests I did for other Flash devices. This is ioDrive2 Duo 2.4TB card and it is visible to OS as two devices (1.2TB each), which can be connected together via software RAID. So I tested in two modes: single drive, and software RAID-0 over two drives.

I should note that to run this card you need to have an external power, by the same reason I mentioned in the previous post: PCIe slot can provide only 25W power, which is not enough for ioDrive2 Duo to provide full performance. I mention this, as it may be challenge for some servers: some models may not have connector for external power, and for some you may need special “power kit”. So you need to make sure you have compatible hardware before getting Duo card. I personally ended up with setup like this: I use a separate power supply.

Fusion-io ioDrive2 Firmware v6.0.0, rev 107004 Public, Fusion-io driver version: 3.1.1.

Now to the results.
For this test I also use Cisco UCS C250 server, and on the graph I show the results for both single card and raid (Duo).

Random writes, async:

We see stable and predictable write performance, with throughput: 660 MiB/s for single, and 1300 MiB/s for Duo

Random reads:

Again both modes provides stable level of throughput. 1350 MiB/s for single and 2300 MiB/s for Duo.

Now with separation per thread for random read synchronous IO:

There is also excellent response time characteristics. 0.25ms and 0.19ms for 8 threads, single and Duo cases.

In general ioDrive2 seems to provide better and more stable performance results comparing to previous generation ioDrive.