Soft RAID 6xR0 3x ich10r+ 3x areca 1231ML

[SteveRo]

Three acard 9010s, all set to raid 0
So 6xR0 across two controllers, three drives on each.
Each drive 4GB.
So HDTach benches each controller's array separately.
AS SSD and CDM results look like they might be testing each controller’s array separately but not sure.
ATTO results begin to look like something special might be happening.
Finally - looking at iometer - some nice numbers come up –
Sequential reads at 1012 MBps
Sequential writes at 866 MBps
4KB random read IOPS at 95000+
4KB random write IOPS at 81000+
Workstation pattern max performance was 897 MBps.
Much thanks to onehertz for the idea!

Imageshack -

[NapalmV5]

nice numbers.. so how fast does co4 load up ?

[SteveRo]

nice numbers.. so how fast does co4 load up ?

#1 I gotta find my install code
#2 I gotta figure out how to get around my space problems.

[One_Hertz]

Steve, this seems to be awesome. Great IOPS. The best part about this setup is that you can add another ACARD or two for a near linear increase in performance (at least in sequential and random numbers). Your max with this setup should be around 1,320MB/s SUSTAINED reads/writes (ICH numbers times two) and 120k random sustained 4kb/read/write IOPS (max Areca numbers times two).

This is actually looking really frigging cool. I am waiting for more benchmarks. If I like what I see and ioxtreme turns out to be full of fail then I'll grab a 1231 as well to raid it with my ICH. I'll also need 5 more X25-Es to max things out . Oh boy this will be $2.5k or so.

What stripe sizes are you using on all the arrays?

[SteveRo]

Steve, this seems to be awesome. Great IOPS. The best part about this setup is that you can add another ACARD or two for a near linear increase in performance (at least in sequential and random numbers). Your max with this setup should be around 1,320MB/s SUSTAINED reads/writes (ICH numbers times two) and 120k random sustained 4kb/read/write IOPS (max Areca numbers times two).

This is actually looking really frigging cool. I am waiting for more benchmarks. If I like what I see and ioxtreme turns out to be full of fail then I'll grab a 1231 as well to raid it with my ICH. I'll also need 5 more X25-Es to max things out . Oh boy this will be $2.5k or so.

What stripe sizes are you using on all the arrays?

how many x25e's will that give you?
For the test above - stripe size was 128 on both with all the write back caches turned on.

[Jor3lBR]

Really nice scores! What RAM you're using on the 9010? How many MBs?

[SteveRo]

Really nice scores! What RAM you're using on the 9010? How many MBs?

6x4GB, memory used in the acards -

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231207

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227290

Question for anyone - is there a way to make a stripped dynamic disk bootable.
If there is - it shure isn't an obvious procedure.

[SteveRo]

After playing with several combinations of stripe sizes it appears the best combo is the 1231 at 64 and the ich10r at 128.
The best performance appears to be at heavy load - queue depth of 512 yields 4KB random reads of 98000+

[Spoiler]

Very nice numbers. Did you have to do anything tricky within the BIOS?

I don't think my Bloodrage board will allow onboard RAID + a raid controller. Last time I checked, the onboard raid screen was bypassed when a raid card was inserted. That goes for trying to soft raid my SAS onboard controller with my ICH10R as well.

[SteveRo]

Very nice numbers. Did you have to do anything tricky within the BIOS?

I don't think my Bloodrage board will allow onboard RAID + a raid controller. Last time I checked, the onboard raid screen was bypassed when a raid card was inserted. That goes for trying to soft raid my SAS onboard controller with my ICH10R as well.

Nope just set the ich10r to raid, create the 3x array in ich10r, create the 3x array on the areca then once in windows 7 open up disk management and select strip from the right click menu. Pretty easy.

I am having a problem with the ich10r droping the array - need to figure this out yet - perhaps I need a bios and/or driver update.