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PERC 5/i RAID Card: Tips and Benchmarks - Page 594

post #5931 of 6517
5/7/12 at 5:54pm
Oh interesting, that appears to be more recent than the LSI software. That is the one you linked before? Would be interesting to compare performance between the two smile.gif. (I expect the features to be the same.)

Did you also find an official I/6 driver from Dell that is kinda recent?

BTW, it looks like your MegaRAID Storage Manager is a very old one, at my link a few posts back you can get a much newer version.
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post #5932 of 6517
5/8/12 at 8:39pm
I downloaded the newer tool as I reloaded my OS, I installed 2k8 r2. Much better for what I want to do with my machine.

LSIRaid.jpg
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post #5933 of 6517
5/10/12 at 12:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by 48548 View Post

Which version are you using for the dell firmware? I think this is the most current for the dell with the adapter card and not intergrated. I am thinking it is version
6.3.1-0003
ftp://ftp.dell.com/sas-raid/DELL_PERC-6-I-ADAPTER_A14_R313334.exe
I have now also flashed the one you linked, it is probably the best choice for the PERC 6/i. It's never than the LSI firmware, and the firmware did not allow me to enter the BIOS config utility.

It looks like most things are working well for me now. Except the BBU. It's attached, it's recognized, I've started Learn Cycles, but it is still not working well enough to enable write back with the "Write Back with BBU" option. It has been attached for several days, so I assume it's not because it needs to be charged by the controller.
Other than buying a new battery, assuming this one to be broken, does anyone have any ideas what the cause/solution could be here?

An assembled screenshot with BBU info. Some relevant lines of text shown in the log, and the BBU-related info it reports Physical and Logical tabs:
235
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post #5934 of 6517
5/10/12 at 3:08pm
That I am not sure as I have only my machine for about a month... Also the driver is pretty old ever with Server 2k8 r2..... It would appear there is not a newer driver. I would say maybe if you can wait long enough... My card and battery will be for sale cheap when I upgrade to the H710 to get 6 gig speeds....
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post #5935 of 6517
5/13/12 at 8:50pm
Couple questions.

Going to use a perc 5/i with ESXI 5.0

I have 2x 1TB seagate SATAS and 2x 500 WD satas. I want to run them both as TWO SEPARATE mirrors. Will there be any performance loss by having two separate arrays?

also does anyone know if you can have a single drive by its self running off the controler in no array?
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post #5936 of 6517
5/18/12 at 5:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by zombo View Post

I have 2x 1TB seagate SATAS and 2x 500 WD satas. I want to run them both as TWO SEPARATE mirrors. Will there be any performance loss by having two separate arrays?

No, you should be able to create as many Volumes as you want with no performance problems, mine has two volumes with 4hdd each.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zombo View Post

also does anyone know if you can have a single drive by its self running off the controler in no array?

You can create a Volume assigning only one drive, this used if you have a card like this, and want to use a software raid like zfs.
Know a couple of situations like this.
The ideal solution is an HBA card instead a raid one, like sas 5/i (not Perc), the discs are shown to the OS directly, In perc´s only apear if you create a Volume.

Best Regards.
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post #5937 of 6517
5/20/12 at 6:41am
I'm having some performance-issues with my PERC 5/i, it seems.

I have a Dell PE 2950, with a PERC 5/i installed. I have 2x 300GB Seagate Cheetah T10 15K RPM (ST3300555SS) in a RAID1-setup.

While copying stuff, or when doing dd-tests, the system is almost unusable;
Quote:
jocke@noshut:~$ time echo "lolol" > testfile
real 0m3.668s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s

jocke@noshut:~$ time echo "lolol" > testfile && time echo "lolol" > testfile2
real 0m8.387s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s

real 0m0.000s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s

jocke@noshut:~$ time ls -al / | grep lolol
real 0m2.420s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.004s
jocke@noshut:~$ time ls -al /etc | grep lolol
real 0m1.143s
user 0m0.008s
sys 0m0.004s
jocke@noshut:~$ time cat testfile | grep kek
real 0m2.012s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.004s

Is this normal/expected behavior?

Further on, I'm getting really slow results from some dd-tests I've been doing;
Quote:
jocke@noshut:~$ ./ddtest.sh
Testing 128k bs
time sh -c "dd if=/dev/zero of=ddfile1 bs=128k count=262144 && sync"
262144+0 records in
262144+0 records out
34359738368 bytes (34 GB) copied, 550.545 s, 62.4 MB/s

real 10m6.725s
user 0m0.108s
sys 0m50.055s
dd if=/dev/zero of=ddfile2 bs=128k count=131072
131072+0 records in
131072+0 records out
17179869184 bytes (17 GB) copied, 250.725 s, 68.5 MB/s
time dd if=ddfile1 of=/dev/null bs=128k
262144+0 records in
262144+0 records out
34359738368 bytes (34 GB) copied, 447.795 s, 76.7 MB/s

real 7m29.888s
user 0m0.120s
sys 0m19.697s
Testing 64k bs
time sh -c "dd if=/dev/zero of=ddfile3 bs=64k count=524288 && sync"
524288+0 records in
524288+0 records out
34359738368 bytes (34 GB) copied, 564.332 s, 60.9 MB/s

real 10m20.132s
user 0m0.184s
sys 0m49.859s
dd if=/dev/zero of=ddfile4 bs=64k count=262144
262144+0 records in
262144+0 records out
17179869184 bytes (17 GB) copied, 263.477 s, 65.2 MB/s
dd if=ddfile3 of=/dev/null bs=64k
524288+0 records in
524288+0 records out
34359738368 bytes (34 GB) copied, 487.615 s, 70.5 MB/s

real 8m10.336s
user 0m0.120s
sys 0m19.329s
Testing 8k bs
time sh -c "dd if=/dev/zero of=ddfile5 bs=8k count=4194304 && sync"
4194304+0 records in
4194304+0 records out
34359738368 bytes (34 GB) copied, 602.128 s, 57.1 MB/s

real 11m10.026s
user 0m0.904s
sys 0m53.283s
dd if=/dev/zero of=ddfile6 bs=8k count=2097152
2097152+0 records in
2097152+0 records out
17179869184 bytes (17 GB) copied, 279.494 s, 61.5 MB/s
time dd if=ddfile5 of=/dev/null bs=8k
4194304+0 records in
4194304+0 records out
34359738368 bytes (34 GB) copied, 546.709 s, 62.8 MB/s

real 9m10.107s
user 0m0.696s
sys 0m21.037s

Taking the sync into the calculations, the write-speeds was the following;
Quote:
128k bs: 54.0 MB/s
64k bs: 52.8 MB/s
8k bs: 48.9 MB/s

Virtual Drive information;
Quote:
root@noshut:~# megacli -LDInfo -Lall -aALL

Adapter 0 -- Virtual Drive Information:
Virtual Drive: 0 (Target Id: 0)
Name :system
RAID Level : Primary-1, Secondary-0, RAID Level Qualifier-0
Size : 278.875 GB
Mirror Data : 278.875 GB
State : Optimal
Strip Size : 128 KB
Number Of Drives : 2
Span Depth : 1
Default Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAdaptive, Direct, Write Cache OK if Bad BBU
Current Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAdaptive, Direct, Write Cache OK if Bad BBU
Default Access Policy: Read/Write
Current Access Policy: Read/Write
Disk Cache Policy : Disk's Default
Encryption Type : None
Is VD Cached: No

I think my battery needs replacement (I've ordered a new one), so I've forced Write Back even if the BBU is bad. This is just for testing purposes, as the system is not "in production" yet, so it doesn't matter if the volume gets messed up if the power should fail.

So, to conclude, shouldn't I be seeing higher numbers than this? Is there something I'm doing wrong?
Edited by jocke - 5/20/12 at 6:43am
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post #5938 of 6517
5/21/12 at 5:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by UnknownDevice View Post

No, you should be able to create as many Volumes as you want with no performance problems, mine has two volumes with 4hdd each.
You can create a Volume assigning only one drive, this used if you have a card like this, and want to use a software raid like zfs.
Know a couple of situations like this.
The ideal solution is an HBA card instead a raid one, like sas 5/i (not Perc), the discs are shown to the OS directly, In perc´s only apear if you create a Volume.
Best Regards.

Thank you so much for your help smile.gif

Also one more question for the pro's..

I have already 2x 1tb drives on a different LSI raid controller, they are in mirror setup, can I switch them to my Perc 5/I without loosing data?
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post #5939 of 6517
5/22/12 at 2:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by zombo View Post

I have already 2x 1tb drives on a different LSI raid controller, they are in mirror setup, can I switch them to my Perc 5/I without loosing data?

The secure way would be to test with another array, created on the same card and importing it after to the new one for test purposes.
There shouldn´t be any problem if you import the array as a foreign volume, don´t create a new one that will destroy all data, you should back up your data first ...
As they are in mirror you can test with one drive to see if imports fine, if not you can put the drive back to reconstruct, but well these are all test procedures that you should do if you have a backup ...
Personally already managed to import a foreigner configuration, but the cards were the same model ...
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post #5940 of 6517
5/23/12 at 1:39am
Did not see any option for doing a foregin import (with the raid BIOS configurator). I managed to do it though, heres how...

Created a new RAID array (mirror) with both the old mirror drives in it.
Set the second RAID mirror drive to OFFLINE
Selected the second RAID mirror drive to Rebuild

After several hours, now optimal smile.gif Tested by plugging the second and first drives just into the onboard controller and they both have identical files smile.gif works mint!

Also I have one more issue, sorry guys!

Ever since installing the Perc 5/I (in my P7P55D-E PRO board) my 16gb RAM is only being detected as 8gb... any idea why? I didn't do the pin mod as it seemed to boot fine, but the RAM seems to be lower :\
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