I am in the market for a new RAID controller for a Dell server, and I have a choice between "PERC H700 512mb Cache" and "PERC H700 512mb NVDIMM Cache". There is a $200 difference between the 2 cards, can anyone recommend either one? Is the second option worth the extra $200?
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NVDIMM is a new technology that avoids the need for a battery-backed cache by preserving the data in memory even in the event of power loss. This article seems like a reasonable primer to the technology. As to whether it's worth it, I'm not sure. I've never had a reliability problem with the BBU in a RAID controller, nor have I had a server down for long enough that the battery fully discharged, but if that was something that made you nervous, it might be worth the extra $200 for peace of mind. I doubt the performance will be substantively different. | ||||
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I've never seen the NVDIMM terminology, but I'm guessing it just means that it's a battery-backed cache (or equivalent to that functionality). In a nutshell, this just means that in an event of power failure, data that is in the controller's write cache will be retained until power comes back on, at which point the data will be flushed to disk. Unless your data doesn't mean much to you, I'd highly suggest going with the battery-backed version. | ||||
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