[GTALUG] Booting Fedora from M.2 Optane Nvme

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 12:32:07PM -0400, Russell via talk wrote:
> With all the CPU cache fencing going on I thought it might be fun to fiddle with NVM express on Fedora 27.  My primary SSD on this z370-A, was/is in build limbo while I updated bios and waited for outcomes. 
> 
> I installed a 32gib module from Newegg ($90 delivered) and I booted from F27-workstation live on usb. I let the anaconda installer do the automatic partitioning. 5gib of the 32gib reported was left unallocated for over-provisioning.
> 
> First boot appeared to be twice as fast as on the SATA SSD. Three or four seconds to get to the gui login as opposed to 7 or 8 on the original drive.
> 
> Had to install hdparm from the repo.
> 
> # hdparm -tT --direct /dev/sda1 
> 
> /dev/sda1:
>  Timing O_DIRECT cached reads:   930 MB in 2.00 seconds = 464.92 MB/sec
>  Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 1370 MB in  3.00 seconds = 456.30 MB/sec
> 
> # hdparm -tT --direct /dev/nvme0n1 
> 
> /dev/nvme0n1:
>  Timing O_DIRECT cached reads:   2302 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1151.84 MB/sec
>  Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 3474 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1157.65 MB/sec
> 
> More info on Nvme with a nice diagram of the Linux storage stack here.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express
> 
> I switched back to the original SSD. An os-probe mapped the device to /dev/dm-1 and I was able to remake grub.conf and add this install to the bootloader on that drive.
> 
> A couple of switches back and forth between drives and it looks like the 10% performance hit I had experienced after the microcode updates, is now somewhat reduced, +-5%. 
> 
> Guilding the lilly a bit, as I didn't have any day to day problems with performance. Although it's hard to name Intel's product actions around this issue a field of Lilly's. 

Not bad, but I think for my money I would get an EVO 960 instead.
Twice the speed and 8 times the space for just under twice the money.
Or 16 times the space for three times the money.  I just don't see any
advantage to the Optane at this point.

-- 
Len Sorensen