Re: possible issues with Dell/Perc5 raid

Matthew Jacob wrote:
Time frame to resolution involves getting a machine into my lab that
evidences the poor performance and the time to sort out what the
problem is and fix it. Remote access doesn't work for me on this one
(contact me offline as to why).

On 5/11/07, Tom Judge <tom@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Randy Schultz wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> We just purchased a Dell 860 with these specifics:
> - dual core pentium 915, 2.8 GHz, 800MHz FSB
> - 2x512 MB 533 MHz DDR2 RAM
> - Dell's SAS/SATA drive controller(which is actually an LSILogic)
> - their 5IR PCI-Express internal RAID controller
> - a pair of 250 GB SATA II's set up RAID 1
>
> After installing 6.2-RELEASE on the system I noticed, while pulling the
> ports
> collection off the CDROM, that the speed to the drives started out just
> fine
> but long before the ports collection was installed the transfer rate was
> down
> to ~35kB/s. Huh. So I started paying closer attention. I installed a
> couple
> of ports and every time there was anything but miniscule data being
> transferred to/from disk the transfer rate bottomed out. I installed the
> blogbench port and it confirmed the I/O as tremendously sluggish. I've
> attached the output of the blogbench runs. The first is from an old 700
> MHz
> pc, Acer M25C mobo, with 1 IDE drive just for comparison. The second
> data set
> is the new Dell. I've also attached the output of dmesg. Everything looks
> fine except for the mpt lines. Would those be telling of something
> amiss or
> are they innocuous barks?
>
> I understand that RAID 1 is not the fastest but I certainly expected it
> to be
> faster than it is, esp. with hw RAID. Are my expectations too high and
> this
> is normal?
>
> --
<SNIP>
From the boot messages you have included below it seems that you have a
Dell SAS-5i (Internal PCIe) controller and not a Perc/5[ie].

The SAS-5 known to have very poor performance (1Mb/s 100%busy) under
certain loads (cvsup).

I have CC'd the author of the mpt driver (Matthew Jacob) as he may be
able to shed more light on the problem and time frame to resolution.

Tom

>
> Copyright (c) 1992-2007 The FreeBSD Project.
> Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
> The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
> FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
> FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE #0: Mon May 7 20:16:35 EDT 2007
> root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/maxu.070507
> Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
> CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz (2800.11-MHz 686-class CPU)
> Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0xf64 Stepping = 4
> Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36

> ,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
> Features2=0xe49d<SSE3,RSVD2,MON,DS_CPL,EST,CNTX-ID,CX16,<b14>,<b15>>
> AMD Features=0x20100000<NX,LM>
> AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>
> Cores per package: 2
> real memory = 1073479680 (1023 MB)
> avail memory = 1041326080 (993 MB)
> ACPI APIC Table: <DELL PE_SC3 >
> FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs
> cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID: 0
> cpu1 (AP): APIC ID: 1
<SNIP>
> mpt0: <LSILogic SAS/SATA Adapter> port 0xec00-0xecff mem 0xfeafc000-0xfeafffff,0xfeae0000-0xf
> eaeffff irq 16 at device 8.0 on pci2
> mpt0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
> mpt0: MPI Version=1.5.13.0
> mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x16
> mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x16 (ACK not required).
> mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x12
> mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x12 (ACK not required).
> mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x12
> mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x12 (ACK not required).
> mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x16
> mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x16 (ACK not required).
<SNIP>
> da0 at mpt0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
> da0: <Dell VIRTUAL DISK 1028> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
> da0: 300.000MB/s transfers, Tagged Queueing Enabled
> da0: 237464MB (486326272 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 30272C)

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These reports on poor performance using mpt seem to be on SATA
drives. Has anybody been seeing this using SAS drives?

We are testing Dell PE840s with hot swap SAS drives, and seem to get decent performance, though I haven't run any benchmarks yet. Any opinions if the PERC5i/mfi is a better choice than the SAS5iR/mpt combination?
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