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Re: amcc/3ware

Andrew Miehs wrote:


On 11/01/2008, at 3:19 PM, Boris Pavlov wrote:
I am not a big fan of 3ware Raid controllers. Up until now it was because 
they were just plan SLOW...
just a quick word from me - simple, can not agree that they are slow. they are not SLOW (caps on) either - comparing to soft raid - same raid level on same computer. 

I am glad that you have had better success with them than I have.

My 'slow' experience comes from 2 Linux servers running
[ 40.834489] 3ware Storage Controller device driver for Linux v1.26.02.001. 
[   46.993597] scsi2 : 3ware Storage Controller
[ 46.993692] 3w-xxxx: scsi2: Found a 3ware Storage Controller at 0xafa0, IRQ: 22. 
[   46.993980]   Vendor: 3ware     Model: Logical Disk 0    Rev: 1.2
[ 46.995418] Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00 
[   46.995952]   Vendor: 3ware     Model: Logical Disk 2    Rev: 1.2
[ 46.997401] Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00 [ 46.999678] 3ware 9000 Storage Controller device driver for Linux v2.26.02.004.
0000:02:02.0 RAID bus controller: 3ware Inc 3ware 7000-series ATA-RAID (rev 01) 
    Subsystem: 3ware Inc 3ware Inc 3ware 7xxx/8xxx-series PATA/SATA-RAID
    Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 22
    I/O ports at afa0 [size=16]
    Memory at fe7ffff0 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16]
    Memory at fd800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8M]
    Expansion ROM at fe7e0000 [disabled] [size=64K]
    Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 1
These cards are about 4 years old now - and the disks directly connected to the 
SATA controller are quicker than the the same disks connected via the 3ware
controller - timing with 'dd' and hdparm.




two questions -

1.) did you read the suggestions on the 3ware's site?
2.) and second, sorry i do not want to be abusive, but how long (as uptime) after the creation of the volume you actually did test the controller? 

did you check the status of the array with tw_cli?
almost as i tough - sometimes the check show less performance, but in general the software raid performs really bad on a burdened server - i've seen this and actually was swearing when, say, about 5 years ago purchased my first 3ware (pata pci) board, which actually solved my problems. afaicr, the board was about 10-15% slower than hdparm with the disks attached to the main board ata. but this is not the same case when the load goes high, believe me :) the server used to nearly hang before that. 

hdparm is not quite relevant, by the way...

edi
PS if you want, we can discuss the details in private - i do use several different amcc/3ware boards, and any possible problems are catching my attention...
And I have had similar experience on 1 windows server - which is running the same card. 
- Windows 2003 running as a file server.
- This will be replaced in the next 3 months with a NetAPP



[cut]
Personally - I would use some sort of SAS/ SCSI Raid for the boot disks, and use an external storage such as 'Infortrend' or NetApp depending on budget. I really dislike internal mass storage. 

Cheers

Andrew
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