The

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Cache Acceleration Software (CAS) is a

computer data storage Computer data storage or digital data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and Data storage, recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The cent ...

product for

solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-state device, or solid-state disk. SSDs rely on non- ...

(SSD) caching.

Description

CAS manages using the SSD storage as a cache layer for slower storage data (e.g. spinning hard drives). A cached copy of recently used data from slower storage is kept in faster SSD storage to improve I/O performance. CAS entered Intel's product line as the result of Intel's August 2012 acquisition of a Canadian start-up company Nevex Virtual Technologies; Intel re-branded Nevex CacheWorks product to CAS with the release of version 2.0 in December 2012. Versions of Intel CAS are available for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Enterprise, Windows Workstation, and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

.Intel releases SSD cache acceleration software for Linux servers - Computerworld
/ref> CAS for Windows is an application-aware file-based cache, which can be tuned by system administrators. Additionally, it integrates with the operating system's

buffer cache In computing, a page cache, sometimes also called disk cache, is a transparent cache for the pages originating from a secondary storage device such as a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). The operating system keeps a page cac ...

, creating a multi-tier cache architecture. CAS is also aware of some

virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s wit ...

technologies like vMotion, maintaining a hot SSD cache during a VM migration. CAS works with the enterprise-class Intel SSD products, such as the DC S3700 SATA drives and the DC P3700 NVMe

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...

devices. It also works with cache devices across SANs. Intel CAS for Linux consists of a GPL'd source loadable kernel module paired with a closed source user-space admin configuration tool. The CAS for Linux version supports

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream (softw ...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version for x86-64. Fedora Linux and ...

and

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for servers and mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for workstations and desktop computers. Its major ve ...

.Intel Cache Acceleration Software - YouTube
/ref> The Windows Enterprise version currently runs only on the 64-bit flavors of

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2, codenamed "Windows Server 7" or "Windows Server 2008 Release 2", is the eighth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It was release ...

SP1 and

Windows Server 2012 Windows Server 2012, codenamed "Windows Server 8", is the ninth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is the server version of Windows based on Windows ...

R2; 32-bit versions are not currently supported. The Windows Workstation version currently runs on only the 64-bit flavors of Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10; 32-bit versions are not currently supported. The current version of CAS for Linux supports write-through, write-back, and write-around caching. The Windows versions of CAS support

write-through In computing, a cache ( ) is a hardware or software component that stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsew ...

and write-back caching.Intel Cache Acceleration Software: FAQ Configuration and Use
/ref> A workstation version, called CAS-W, was announced in September 2013 by

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

; Dell's announcement states an exclusive agreement with Intel to offer CAS-W only for

Dell Precision Dell Precision is a line of computer workstations for computer-aided design/architecture/computer graphics professionals . They are available in both desktop (tower) and mobile (laptop) forms. Dell touts their Precision Mobile Workstations are "op ...

workstations.Intel Cache Acceleration Software with Dell and Autodesk - YouTube
/ref>

Operating System and File System Support

Intel CAS for Linux

Intel CAS for Windows Enterprise

Intel CAS for Windows Workstation

References

External links

*
Open CAS FrameworkOld blog post on the (now defunct) Nevex web site explaining the basic idea behind CacheWorks
{{Intel Solid-state caching Intel acquisitions Intel products