DL385 Gen10 v1 Disk Performance - CM-7 Drive Question

Hardware Enterprise Gear
1

Hey everyone,
I have a DL385 Gen 10 V1.

Currently I am using 4 drive PCIE cards with 4TB SSD’s in a raid config for max speed / througput. The system has 2TB of ram with 2 7742 Epyc 64 core processors.

However, as this is driving a Mariadb database, it can take 45-75 mintues to flush cash for restarts at times.
Just saw Wendell’s posts about the uber fast CM-7 drives - and well. I like fast.

Since this system has Gen 4 PCIE - I am trying to confirm what PCIE adapter card I may need to connect a CM-7? Would love to set this up, and test/compare against the 4 drive adapter to see if I can increase database performance.

Getting information on the CM-7 and mounting procedures seems to be a little sparse. All I can really find is PCIE 5 / NVME as the “interface”. I also found 1 site that reported that a U.3 PCIE adapter would work. But, I also find references here about “redrivers”…

So, I thought I would ask the knowledgeable peeps here to see if I can get some authoritave information about what I might look for to try this fast drive out.

Thank you

2

Some more information as I work through bottlenecks etc…

The system is a database server, and I have the database split between two 4 port PCIE cards with 4 SSD’s each in raid 10 configuration.

It seems that I am capping out around 350-400MB/s on these cards - which is a bit puzzling, as I would expect higher speed out of them. Granted - 350-400MB/s is right around the cap for 1 drive. But in a raid 10, I would expect a bit of a performance boost. The first mdadm array is made up of samsung (4) 870’s. The second mdadm array is made up of Sabrent SB-RKT4P.

So the thought process is to update, perhaps, to a CM-7 or U.2 or U.3 type drive - and look for some more throughput?

The reason for looking to increase throughput? I am seeing, occasionally 100% on iotop - and would like to bring more iron to bear to allow more throughput when needed.