AMD releases their Free NVMe RAID support for Threadripper

AMD has officially unlocked NVMe RAID support on their X399 Threadripper CPU platform, allowing users to create bootable RAID arrays thanks to new X399 BIOS updates and a freely available Windows NVMe RAID driver. 

Alongside this support, AMD has also released a tool called RAIDXpert2, which AMD has created to allow users to create new NVMe RAID arrays or to monitor existing ones. Please note that creating a new RAID array will delete the data on the drives used, so please backup your data when creating a new RAID array. 

NVMe RAID on Threadripper is only supported on Windows 10 build 1703 or newer. AMD ‘s NVMe RAID driver is available to download here.  

Below is AMD’s basic step-by-step guide to set up a NVMe RAID configuration on Threadripper. 

 

• – Download the latest AMD RAIDXpert2 package to obtain the NVMe RAID driver and management software.
• – Update the BIOS for your AMD X399-based motherboard to add BIOS support for NVMe RAID.
• – Install two or more NVMe SSDs to your system.
• – Create a new NVMe RAID array:
  1.       Method A: …Using your motherboard’s firmware. There will be a new menu in your BIOS, or a new menu accessible with a hotkey during POST. This will vary by model.
  2.       Method B: …using the AMD RAIDXpert2 software.
  3. – Make sure your disks do not contain important data!
• – Just enjoy! No hardware activation keys, license fees, or arbitrary SSD restrictions apply. It’s that simple.

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With these new updates, AMD users can now RAID up to six different NVMe SSDs, with AMD’s testing showing a 5.38x gain in IOMeter throughput when using six NVMe SSDs. This setup allows six Samsung 960 Pro SSDs to offer over 21200MB/s reads, which is almost 40x faster than a high-performance SATA SSD.  

On AMD’s X399 platform RAID-0, RAID-1 and RAID-10 are supported, with hot-swap options being available to RAID-1 and RAID-10 users. 

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The lack of NVMe RAID support at launch was very disappointing for AMD’s Threadripper platform, especially given the sheer number of PCIe lanes that are available to utilise. This allows AMD users to create huge NVMe RAID arrays, which may seem like a useless prospect to many consumers given the pricing of high-speed NVMe SSDs, but it is certainly of interest to those that can find a use for ultra-high speed non-volatile storage. 

 

You can join the discussion on AMD bringing NVMe RAID support to their X399 Threadripper CPU platform on the OC3D Forums.