How Is Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Different from Other RAID Management Solutions?

Looking for a comparison of Intel® VROC and other RAID solutions.

• Difference with Microsoft Storage Spaces*: Intel® VROC supports the following features that Microsoft Storage Spaces* does not:
  • Bootable RAID
  • Linux* Support
  • RAID Management in pre-OS environment
  • Support LED status indicator on SSDs in RAID arrays
• Difference with Linux* MD RAID: Intel® VROC for Linux* is built upon MD RAID, and the Intel® VROC team has an MD RAID maintainer on the team. However, Intel® VROC has the following extra features:
  • Provides UEFI HII and UEFI Shell command line RAID management.
  • Provides webpage based, remote RAID management and RESTful APIs.
  • Fully validated and supported with industry-select SSDs.
  • Provides hotfix/patch to specific customer issue on supported OS.
  • Provides a bootable NVMe* RAID solution.

The Intel® VROC development team adds features and functionality to Intel® VROC and then upstreams those changes to the Linux* kernel. A specific Linux* distribution’s kernel version, release schedule, and decision to include any Intel® VROC changes will impact the availability of Intel® VROC in that distribution. As general guidance, a certain level of Intel® Volume Management Device (Intel® VMD) and Intel® VROC code needs to be in the Linux* kernel used in order for Intel® VROC to be functional. The initial code changes for this functionality were around kernels 4.8/4.10 and limited functionality can be expected. However, for a stable and fully functional base, it is recommended to use kernel 4.15 or above.