New Features Introduced with the Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) 8.0 Release for Windows*

The following information lists the new features introduced with the Intel® VROC 8.0 release for Windows*. To learn about the latest updates of Intel® VROC for Windows*, refer to the Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Release Notes for Windows*.

LED Management on PCH-VMD

There are two PCIe ports designed and controlled under the Platform Controller Hub (PCH), Emmitsburg, and this feature with LED management is implemented in the circuit and the on-board secondary CPLD. Designers need to implement the same or similar logic control as this CPLD does to control two LEDs designed on-board to represent the RAID status.

Intel® VROC 8.0 New Graphical User Interface (GUI) Design

With the Intel® VROC 8.0 release, the GUI application has a new and fresh design.

Warning Message Displayed When the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the Driver Version Mismatch

When this warning message condition is detected from one major version or two minor versions difference, the Intel® VROC GUI will not allow to manage the storage controller but can provide a set of functionalities corresponding to the lowest driver version. The Intel® VROC GUI utility still can start even if there is no driver installed. 

Intel® VROC Pre-EFI Initialization Module (PEIM) Support

Intel® VROC is a software RAID solution for NVMe* and SATA drives. Intel® VROC starting with version 8.0.1 introduces the Intel® VROC Pre-EFI Initialization Module (PEIM) to support the BIOS recovery scenario during boot.

The Intel® VROC PEI module for SATA provides access to RAID volumes and SATA drives connected to the Intel® SATA controller.  The Intel® VROC PEI module for Intel® Volume Management Device (Intel® VMD) provides access to RAID volumes and NVMe* drives connected to a single Intel® VMD controller.

Both modules have common code base with PEI interface implementation and RAID logic. The main difference between them is the different transport implementations (AHCI vs. Intel® VMD and NVMe*). Every Intel® VROC PEI module installs two PEIM-to-PEIM interfaces (PPI), defined in the PI specification: 

• EFI_PEI_RECOVERY_BLOCK_IO_PPI
• EFI_PEI_RECOVERY_BLOCK_IO2_PPI

These PPIs are used to read data from pass-through drives and RAID volumes, enumerated by the Intel® VROC PEI modules.

Intel® VROC 8.0 PEI modules have several limitations: 

• The Intel® VROC VMD PEI module enumerates single Intel® VMD devices, regardless of how many Intel® VMD devices are present in the system.
• The RAID engine does not support RAID Write Hole (RWH) protection mechanism for RAID 5. While the RWH condition occurs for RAID 5, the Intel® VROC UEFI PEI module will provide data access to this RAID volume without the RWH recovery procedure. The data read in the PEI phase from a RAID 5 volume may be affected by the RWH scenario. 
• The RAID engine does not support drives with 4kiB block size – such drives will not be enumerated. Pass-through drives will not be exposed as block devices. RAID volumes consisting of such drives will also not be exposed.

Physical Drive Location Information in UEFI

When the Intel® VROC product displays how the Intel® Volume Management Device (Intel® VMD) controller enumerates the drives, the drive information is showing in the Intel® VROC HII like in the figure below. The information is not straightforward and not easy to interpret. To present the drive location information in a user-friendly manner, Intel® VROC offers a protocol that will allow customers to report how the drives are connected and how customers would like the information reported in the customer platform.