Intel VROC now only available in hardware bundles; removes limitations on different RAID configurations

[Sephiroth]

This news is a few days old, however I've not seen it posted here yet and it's kinda worth while to talk about. The article comes from PC World and brings both good and bad news (https://www.pcworld.com/article/3234669/storage/intel-says-vroc-raid-isnt-dead-its-just-trapped-in-a-hardware-bundle.html). Let's start off with the bad: Intel will no longer be selling those VROC keys to consumers. If you want one, you need to buy it bundled with Intel SSDs or X299 motherboards. 

 

Quote

On Monday, Intel added another twist. The company told PCWorld that VROC keys will be available in only two ways: bundled with new X299 motherboards or bundled with Intel SSDs. 

 

That's right: Individual keys to enable VROC will not be sold directly to consumers. However, Intel said it's leaving it up to board and system vendors to decide what to do for those who already purchased X299 motherboards and systems based on the upcoming feature.

 

Intel declined to release final pricing for the VROC key, because the key won't be sold apart from a bundle.

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Intel confirmed that the consumer version of VROC will still only work with Intel SSDs. It's not clear whether trying different brands of SSD would be impossible, risky, or just undesirable (in Intel's eyes). All Intel officials would say is that only Intel drives would be validated.

Also not clear is how many devices VROC will support in its final consumer trim. As presented at Computex, VROC could RAID up to 20 devices in PCIe, but Intel didn't disclose how many drives it will support when finally released.

Intel didn't say exactly when VROC would be available but said vendors have access to it now, and its arrival is imminent.as

Don't worry, Internet, there's more for you to be angry about. VROC will still only function with Skylake-X Cdore i9 and Core i7 CPUs, leaving Core i7 and Core i5 Kaby Lake X users in the cold.

 

This is pretty shitty on Intel's part on a feature they've already managed to fuck up way more than I expected. This is especially true if any of you purchased your X299 PCs with the intent of making use of this feature, and already purchased 3rd party SSDs (Samsung 960 Pros being a likely choice for many, as Intel isn't really top quality in the SSD space yet, though it's possible the brand new optane SSDs change this). Hopefully board manufacturers won't make it too costly to obtain one of these, but depending on the board/system manufacturer you selected, you might not even be able to get one now. Also, I think it goes without saying that if you wanted to set up RAID directly off the CPU's PCIe lanes, and you don't require X299 specifically, AMD is your best bet as you won't need an add-in hardware key AND you won't be limited to a small subset of approved NVME SSDs. 

 

Fortunately, there was one nugget of good news

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One welcome change is the elimination of the most controversial aspect: a proposed sliding cost scale. At Computex, motherboard vendors said VROC prices would likely vary, with RAID 0 going for $99 and RAID 5 costing $150. That alone caused a massive groan across the Internet. Intel now says any VROC key will enable RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 modes on the X299 platform.

So yeah, if you end up choosing Intel and obtaining a VROC key, at least you don't need to pay more to set up more secure RAID configurations. For now....

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

So basically Intel still has absolute confidence that they can slap consumers and expect them to be masochists... Well it still works for them but hopefully that changes if AMD can continue to rise and take market share.

[Centurius]

Something something team red

[NumLock21]

This board has vroc too and it's not X299

https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/WS-C621E-SAGE/

[Dabombinable]

So there is even more of a reason to choose X399?

[LAwLz]

I before people confuse VROC with other types of RAID. Oh wait, seems like I was already too late. 

[samcool55]

3 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

So there is even more of a reason to choose X399?

Yeah, iirc threadripper "only" supports raid 0,1 and 10 but it's free, you only need an updated BIOS. And you can use whatever SSD you like.

[Drak3]

7 hours ago, huilun02 said:

What is normally free and vendor agnostic is now a paid Intel exclusive. 

 

Intel, at the forefront og new tech accessibility. Because they care about you. 

Prior to X299, bootable, hardware RAID over PCIe did not exist in the x86 world. Only software RAID, which was never a feature paid for separately, and hardware SATA RAID isn't locked behind an arbitrary paywall either.

[mynameisjuan]

1 hour ago, samcool55 said:

Yeah, iirc threadripper "only" supports raid 0,1 and 10 but it's free, you only need an updated BIOS. And you can use whatever SSD you like.

And its free for x299 and you can use any SSD. Its just off the chipset instead. 

 

I like how most dont even research what VROC is vs RAID off the chipset, they just blame intel after reading the title of the post. 

[NumLock21]

Regular sata still supports raid 0,1,5, and 10. It's m.2 nvme where they locked it to just raid 0, and you need that stupid vroc key to unlock other raid options. This runs the raid off your cpu, but x299 chipset has plenty of lanes too, 24 at pcie 3.0.

[samcool55]

4 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

And its free for x299 and you can use any SSD. Its just off the chipset instead. 

 

I like how most dont even research what VROC is vs RAID off the chipset, they just blame intel after reading the title of the post. 

Yeah, try that with a PCI-E Nvme SSD, you can't

 

Chipset vs CPU, that's the whole point.

 

x399 also supports RAID-configs straight from the CPU since 25th of september.

Chipset-raid configs are about 10 years old so that's nothing new.

 

The main reason why CPU raid configs are important is if you want to use pci-e nvme drives. Because they go straight to to CPU and not via the chipset you need the CPU support. With X299 you need to somehow get hold of a key and the right SSD drives while with X399 you just update the BIOS and are good to go.

 

Maybe you should do some research next time O_o...

VROC is nothing more than RAID-support from the CPU instead of the chipset, there's a reason why VROC means "Virtual raid on CPU

[Trixanity]

Next up for Intel:

Drink verification can to boot your PC.

[mynameisjuan]

8 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

The main reason why CPU raid configs are important is if you want to use pci-e nvme drives. Because they go straight to to CPU and not via the chipset you need the CPU support. With X299 you need to somehow get hold of a key and the right SSD drives while with X399 you just update the BIOS and are good to go.

 

Maybe you should do some research next time O_o...

VROC is nothing more than RAID-support from the CPU instead of the chipset, there's a reason why VROC means "Virtual raid on CPU

Why do you think I said off the chipset instead? 

 

I didnt say everything is going to work, just sick of people treating x299 like raid is impossible without paid keys. 

[samcool55]

Just now, mynameisjuan said:

Why do you think I said off the chipset instead? 

 

I didnt say everything is going to work, just sick of people treating x299 like raid is impossible without paid keys. 

Because you said you can use ANY ssd off the chipset, which is false.

 

The problem is that Intel decided to lock most VROC configs away behind a key. The concept of locking performance/features with a key you need to get separately has been tried years ago and everyone hated it, for good reasons. And for some reason intel decided to do it AGAIN. The fact you can't just buy a key and it needs Intel SSD's makes it even worse. People were already angry and somehow, Intel found a way to make them even more mad!

 

x299 is an enthousiast platform, VROC is imo not really useful but a really cool feature. If you want REALLY fast volatile storage, pci-e nvme ssd's in raid is a great option. The amount of people that want to get such raid-config isn't much but the few that do want it are understandably mad about how intel does the VROC stuff.

 

The fact AMD offers similar functionality for FREE with no limit to what brand of ssd's can be used makes people that got x299 even more mad.

 

Intel is being anti-consumer and the consumers don't like it so it's understandable they are angry at Intel, especially because there's a worthy alternative.

[samcool55]

3 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

wait i need to recallibrate: was the point of the hate in this thread being "if threadripper could afford RAID over nvme why wouldn't intel just unrestrict nvme RAID (that the VROC key cockblocks) completely"?

I assume people were hoping with AMD giving threadripper support for CPU raid on X399 intel would do something positively about VROC because there's competition in that area. Keep in mind that VROC was announced with the X299 platform so we knew VROC would be a thing for x299 but some important details were missing (like how would you get a VROC key for example).

Forward a few months, x399 is available WITH cpu raid, basically VROC for threadripper, but the VROC keys to enable most raid configs were still nowhere to be found.

Now, finally, we know how you can get a key, in a stupid bundle and it will only work with intel SSD's...

 

So, between intel announcing VROC and telling us the details about VROC, x399 got announced, launched and similar functionality became available. We still can't get those VROC keys btw, you can't buy a bundle with a VROC key included (yet).

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

wait i need to recallibrate: was the point of the hate in this thread being "if threadripper could afford RAID over nvme why wouldn't intel just unrestrict nvme RAID (that the VROC key cockblocks) completely"?

My main gripe is that they are trying to limit CPU based raid to their SSDs and the keys are now only part of a bundle. (Some good news as a vendor can decide to bundle the key with the mobo, and their is no longer tiered keys for different types of CPU raid.)

[cj09beira]

1 hour ago, Drak3 said:

Prior to X299, bootable, hardware RAID over PCIe did not exist in the x86 world. Only software RAID, which was never a feature paid for separately, and hardware SATA RAID isn't locked behind an arbitrary paywall either.

false, x299 might have announced it earlier but x399 launched the feature a month ago, with no restrictions 

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, cj09beira said:

false, x299 might have announced it earlier but x399 launched the feature a month ago, with no restrictions 

RAID 0 over VROC on X299 was supported day one with x8 PCIe SSDs. RAID 0 over VROC also supported x4 Intel SSDs day one.

The feature was released with X299.

[ARikozuM]

You can use non-Intel drives with VROC, but you won't be getting any assistance for something going wrong.

 

I'd like to see if VROC could come to the consumer platform once the chipset allows enough bandwidth.

 

Also, who RAIDs NVMe drives? 

[AnonymousGuy]

3 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

You can use non-Intel drives with VROC, but you won't be getting any assistance for something going wrong.

 

I'd like to see if VROC could come to the consumer platform once the chipset allows enough bandwidth.

 

Also, who RAIDs NVMe drives? 

Correct, there's non-Intel drives that are on the QVL for VROC.  I don't know off the top of my head if you can use non-QVL drives or not, but Intel is basically saying they're only optimizing and fixing stuff for drives on the QVL.

 

And yeah, the number of people RAID-ing NVME drives is tiny, but people love to bitch.

[ARikozuM]

5 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Correct, there's non-Intel drives that are on the QVL for VROC.  I don't know off the top of my head if you can use non-QVL drives or not, but Intel is basically saying they're only optimizing and fixing stuff for drives on the QVL.

People haven't tried to do VROC, but will call out companies for something that isn't clearly written, like otic (ear) vs oral (mouth) solutions... it's for your ear, read the directions on the label. 

5 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

And yeah, the number of people RAID-ing NVME drives is tiny, but people love to bitch.

The benefit would only apply to databases that get hit with large amounts of changing data. Anyone else is going to hit a performance wall where the cost should have been placed on a single, larger NVMe or a JBOD array. Then there's the fact that you can still make a software RAID with NVMe if your board supports multiple NVMe drives through your OS.

[Drak3]

40 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Also, who RAIDs NVMe drives? 

Only people that can't get a larger single drive, like redundancy, and performance junkies.

[Bcat00]

22 hours ago, Sephiroth said:

 

Oh who cares man, if someone decides to buy into this in the first place then they are asking to be butchered.

You can't help dumb people make wise buying decisions, its a well known fact if you worked in retail. 

[Sephiroth]

21 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

This board has vroc too and it's not X299

https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/WS-C621E-SAGE/

I'm not sure that board is even for sale yet (wasn't it only recently announced like a week or two ago?) and if that's the case it'll probably come with the VROC hardware key. What's more, it's not like someone buying this board is going to be strapped for cash, what with it utilizing dual xeons and all. Far more likely for an X299 mid price range build to be carefully planned around VROC (even including the cost of the key) and then potentially derailed by having to get the key with an unwanted bundle or jump through hoops of obtaining it from their board manufacturer.