Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Technical Product Specification for Windows*
Content Type: Product Information & Documentation | Article ID: 000095821 | Last Reviewed: 05/20/2025
Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) is an enterprise RAID solution that unleashes the performance of NVMe* SSDs. Intel® VROC is enabled by a feature in Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors called Intel® Volume Management Device (Intel® VMD), an integrated controller inside the CPU PCIe root complex. NVMe* SSDs are directly connected to the CPU, allowing the full performance potential of fast storage devices to be realized. Intel® VROC enables these benefits without the complexity, cost, and power consumption of traditional hardware RAID host bus adapter (HBA) cards placed between the drives and the CPU.
| What you should know about the Intel® VROC package | System vendors may customize the Intel® VROC package for their specific platforms. Reference your OEM for a full list of available feature sets. If any of the information referenced here conflicts with the support information provided by the platform OEM, the platform documentation and configurations take precedence. Customers should always contact the place of purchase or the system/software manufacturer with support questions about their specific hardware or software configuration. See more information in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Technical Support for End Customers. |
This Technical Product Specification (TPS) describes the functional requirements and technical details that make up the Intel® VROC family of products for Windows* environments including Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID), Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) and Intel® VROC (Non-VMD NVMe* RAID). The features outlined cover those for the Pre-Operating System (Pre-OS) components (operating system independent) and the Windows* based drivers, tools and Graphical User Interface (GUI) application.
The intended audience of this TPS is the platform manufacturers (OEMs/ODMs) that require detailed information about the features and technical specifications of the Intel® VROC family of products. It contains information pertinating to the Intel® VROC family of products including:
The information in this Technical Product Specification is organized in the following sections:
Consult the Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) User Guide for Windows* to learn about Intel® VROC usage, release notes and supported configurations.
| Intel® VROC 9.1 | This information is up to date for the Intel® VROC 9.1 release. |
The Intel® VROC software package for Windows* is comprised of the following individual components:
These package components comprised of, and support the Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID), the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) and the Intel® VROC (Non-VMD NVMe* RAID) environments. Refer to the following resources to learn more about these components:
The Intel® VROC CLI utility (IntelVROCCli.exe) is a Windows* executable that can be run either from a Microsoft WinPE* environment or from a fully installed Windows* operating system. Learn more about the Intel® VROC CLI utility for Windows* in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Command Line Interface (CLI) Utility for Windows*.
The Intel® VROC installation utility (SetupVROC.exe) is a Windows* executable that runs from a fully installed Windows* operating system. Learn more about the Intel® VROC installation utility for Windows* in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Installation Utility for Windows*.
Whereas the Intel® VROC CLI and the installation utility components are common for all Intel® VROC sub-products, there are specific Pre-OS and F6 components for the Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID) environment. Learn about the Pre-OS and F6 components for the Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID) environment in the following resources:
Whereas the Intel® VROC CLI and the installation utility components are common for all Intel® VROC sub-products, there are specific Pre-OS and F6 components for the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) environment. Learn about the Pre-OS and F6 components for the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) environment in the following resources:
The Intel® VROC family of products is comprised of several components that provide a complete platform solution. The following resources describe in detail the key features that are supported on the Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID), Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) and Intel® VROC (Non-VMD NVMe* RAID) sub-products.
Learn about the key features included in the Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID) sub-product in Key Features of Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) VMD NVMe* RAID for Windows*.
Learn about the key features included in the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) sub-product in Key Features of Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) SATA RAID for Windows*.
Learn about the key features included in the Intel® VROC (Non-VMD NVMe* RAID) sub-product in Key Features of Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Non-VMD NVMe* RAID for Windows*.
These are the common features between the Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID), Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) and Intel® VROC (Non-VMD NVMe RAID) packages. The following resources describe in detail the key common features supported in these sub-products.
| Key Features | |
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Learn about the RAID management capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) RAID Management Capabilities for Windows*.
Learn about the RAID configuration capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) RAID Configuration Capabilities for Windows*.
Learn about the LED management capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) LED Management Capabilities for Windows*.
Learn about the hot-plug capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Hot-Plug Capabilities for Windows*.
Learn about the hot-spare disk capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Hot-Spare Disk Capabilities for Windows*.
Learn about the drive requirements for Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Drive Requirements for Windows*.
Learn about the RAID volume rebuild capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) RAID Volume Rebuild Capabilities for Windows*.
Learn about the verify and repair capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Verify and Repair Capabilities for Windows*.
Learn about the read patrol capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Read Patrol Capabilities for Windows*.
The Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to perform check pointing to be able to track forward progress on read patrol, array rebuilds and volume migration if interrupts occur. Upon a system restart, the operation will restart from the last valid stage reached.
Learn about the bad block management capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Bad Block Management Capabilities for Windows*.
Learn about the RAID Write Hole (RWH) Closure capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) RAID Write Hole (RWH) Closure.
Learn about the controller default values of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Controller Default Values for Windows*.
The Intel® VROC family of products provides support for Partial Parity Logging (PPL). PPL is used to record the results of XOR’ing old data with old parity. PPL is currently saved as part of the RAID member information and is only utilized when writing RAID 5 parity. It helps protect against data loss when a power failure or a system crash occurs by allowing data to be rebuilt by utilizing the PPL information.
Learn about the dirty shutdown recovery capabilities of Intel® VROC in Windows* environments in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Dirty Shutdown Recovery Capabilities for Windows*.
| Component Version Detection | At launch, the Intel® VROC Graphical User Interface (GUI) application will determine the version of the Pre-OS environment and driver being used by the system. The version information of all components will be compared, and the lowest common denominator will be used to determine the features visible in the Intel® VROC GUI application. |
The Intel® VROC software package provides high-performance support for:
Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) refers to multiple independent disks combined to form one logical drive. The main objective of this enterprise technology is to improve storage system performance, data protection, and increase fault-tolerance.
The following information outlines those components that are used for installing and managing the Intel® VROC family of products.
The Intel® VROC GUI application is a Windows* based application that provides users monitoring and management capabilities. Learn more about the Intel® VROC GUI application in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Graphical User Interface (GUI) Application for Windows*.
The System Report from the Intel® VROC GUI application provides the detailed information about the system. It contains platform information, Intel® VROC component information and information on all the attached devices. To obtain this information open the Intel® VROC GUI application and select the ? button to open the Help window. The System Report window provides a way to scroll through the information and an option to save the system report information to a file. This file can be provided to Intel to support debugging issues.
Learn more about the Intel® VROC System Report in Troubleshooting Tips for Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) in Windows* Environments.
The notification area provides storage system status and notifications such as volume and disk events based on a change of state. Learn more about the Intel® VROC notification area in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Notification Area in Windows*.
The user can manage the arrays allowing to review the properties and access all actions associated with them, such as adding a disk or increasing the volume size. Learn more about managing arrays in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Array Management Capabilities in Windows*.
The user can manage disks allowing to review the properties and access all actions associated with them, such as marking a disk as spare. Learn more about managing disks in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Disk Management Capabilities in Windows*.
Intel® VROC family of products supports the ability to provide a disk monitoring service. The service will be active by default and executed as a system service. The service will monitor the system for SMART and RAID volume state changes events. The changes will be logged in the system log.
Support for the NVMe* Deallocate/SATA TRIM command allows the operating system to pass information to the Solid-State Drive (SSD) that identifies sectors that can be deleted. The SSD will then go through and clear out that information in the background thereby minimizing the chances of an overwriting process happening at crucial times. The SSD is also free to do some additional optimizations with those sectors (e.g., an SSD can pre-erase any sector that has been TRIM'ed). The NVMe* Deallocate/SATA TRIM command improves the long term write performance and the lifespan of SSDs.
This feature is not an end-user visible feature. There is no Intel® VROC application or user interface control to configure the feature.
Uninstalling the Intel® VROC RAID driver could potentially cause an end-user to lose access to important data within a RAID volume. Learn about how to perform a proper uninstallation in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Uninstallation Procedure in Windows*.
The Intel® VROC family of products supports all the following power management functions required by the operating system:
Supporting these power states applies to scenarios without hot-swapping the Intel® VROC RAID hardware upgrade key.
| Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID) Power Management Hot-Plug Limitation | Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID) sub-product does not support performing drive hot-plug (removal/inserting) while the system is in a reduced power state from either a Sleep or Hibernate power management activity. This limitation does not apply to Intel® VROC (SATA RAID). |
Consult the miscellaneous features and functionalities of the Intel® VROC family of products in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Miscellaneous Features and Functionality in Windows*.
Learn about the usage of the different components and the platform requirements needed to properly support the usage of the Intel® VROC family of products in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Pre-OS RAID Management Environment.
Intel® VROC family of products supports upgrading to new release packages. Each Intel® VROC release package contains the Pre-OS components, the operating system drivers, the product installation application, and tools. Intel recommends that all Intel® VROC components installed on the supported platform are upgraded to the latest version of the product. Learn more about Intel® VROC package updates in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Package Updates and Compatibility.
Consult the list of storage system events related to Intel® VROC in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Storage System Events in Windows*.
The following is a list of relevant specifications used by the Intel® VROC family of products:
UEFI Driver
The Intel® VROC UEFI driver, in an effort to provide similar functionality as in the legacy OROM, has implemented the Port Number value in the Device Path as a bitmap representing the physical disk connections that the logical disk represents. The LSB (least significant bit) represents port 0 and increases linearly. E.g., a single pass-thru disk on SATA port 3 (assuming the SATA ports are enumerated 0 – X) is represented by 0000_1000b (or 0x08).
EFI_DEVICE_PATH_PROTOCOL
For each logical disk that is exposed by the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) UEFI driver, an EFI_DEVICE_PATH_PROTOCOL shall be created. The Device Path Protocol for each logical disk shall be appended to the PCI SATA Controller Device Path.
The fields of the EFI_DEVICE_PATH_PROTOCOL shall be filled out differently depending on whether the device is an SDD or an HDD.
| EFI_DEVICE_PATH_PROTOCOL Field | ATAPI (ODD) | HDD/Volume – Logical Device |
| Type | 3 (Messaging Device Path) | 3 (Messaging Device Path) |
| Sub-Type | 18 (SATA) | 18 (SATA) |
| Length | 10 | 10 |
| HBA Port Number | Port ID bitmap (bit #n set if device is on port #n) | Port ID bitmap (bit #n set if logical device contains device ID #n) Lowest Significant Bit (LSB) represents port 0. |
| Port Multiplier Port Number | 0x8000 (directly connected) | 0x8000 (directly connected) |
| Logical Unit Number | 0 | 0 for pass-thru devices, myVolRaidDevNum for RAID volumes, which is the nth volume created on the array. |
| Value | Status |
| 0h | Unknown. |
| 1h | Offline – The drive is an array member of another RAID volume and as such, could not be configured. |
| 2h | Missing – The drive is not present or physically connected to the computer. |
| 3h | Failed – The drive has failed to properly complete read and write operations in a timely manner and it has exceeded its recoverable error threshold. |
| 4h | At risk (SMART event) – An impending error condition was detected on the drive, and it is now at risk of failing. |
| 5h | Incompatible – Drive usage type is not supported in this configuration. It may occur when this drive has been used with previous versions of Intel® VROC or this drive does not meet requirements of SKU, which is already active. The user can clear metadata from the drive and use it for another purpose. |
| 6h | Normal – The drive is present, functioning as expected, and unlocked. |
| 7h | Locked – The drive is locked. |
| 8h | Unsupported – This NVMe* SSD vendor or model is not currently on the Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) NVMe* Drives Support List. |
Consult the list of supported NVMe* SSDs as well as the list of switch vendors Intel has worked with to support Intel® VMD and LED management in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Supported Configurations.
To learn about how to resolve the most commong problems that may occur while using the Intel® VROC product, refer to Troubleshooting Tips for Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) in Windows* Environments.
If the user has any questions regarding installing, using, or maintaining this product, the user can also visit Resources for Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) which provides the user with self-help resources and contact support options.