New LSI 9200 series controllers: 6Gb/s, 2.88 GB/s seq. reads, 1.87 GB/s seq. writes

[SteveRo]

What's wrong with your .xls files?

[F@32]

Couple of questions on MegaRAID SAS 9260-4i kit:

1. What type of cable does it come with? Mini-SAS to SATA?
2. What would be the best price/performance SSDs for it? I'm thinking 30Gb/40Gb. Great 4K random reads being priority, and nice sequential reads are second. Would cacheless drives be the best since it already has 512MB onboard cache?
3. Does it support SATA 6Gb/s?

Cheers

[Wintel64]

Couple of questions on MegaRAID SAS 9260-4i kit:

1. What type of cable does it come with? Mini-SAS to SATA?
2. What would be the best price/performance SSDs for it? I'm thinking 30Gb/40Gb. Great 4K random reads being priority, and nice sequential reads are second. Would cacheless drives be the best since it already has 512MB onboard cache?
3. Does it support SATA 6Gb/s?

Cheers

1. Mini-SAS to 4 x SATA
2. Intel X25-V
3. SSD interface is 3Gbps but support 6Gbps

[F@32]

Probably linked somewhere above, but this does not look too pretty for 9260-8i.

For controllers I have four options available to me. The two non-SAS controllers were the Areca 1220 and the ICH10R integrated into the chipset of my Gigabyte P55A-UD6. The two SAS controllers were the Adaptec 5805 and LSI 9260-8i. Cached writes were enabled on all controllers along with read-ahead when available.

[Computurd]

ummmm that review is old bro. the 4k potential of this card has been expanded tremendously along with its latency in the latest round of firmwares. i think that was published tow firmwares ago. that is something they have alluded to as well in the conclusion of that reeview. this is relatively virgin silicon. a lot of room left for improvement. the FastPath software that is coming is supposed to triple small file random IOPS in some cases.

[Computurd]

here is a screen shot of the 4k random file performance from the last firmware. the improvement. also look at the latency improvements. fantastic! (this is from previous testing i have done on this forum) you can see the 9260 matching ich10r.

[Mastakilla]

I must be getting stupid or something, but how the heck do you install a firmware on this controller?

I downloaded MegaCLI for Windows 7 x64, extracted it, extracted MegaCliSupport.zip, extracted AF2108_FW_Image.rom, all in the same folder.
I disabled UAC (putting the slider to the lowest stand)

and tried:

C:\Program Files\LSI\MegaCLI>MegaCli64.exe -adpfwflash -f AF2108_FW_Image.rom -a
0

CreateFile failed with error: 5
CreateFile failed with error: 5
CreateFile failed with error: 5
ERROR:Could not detect controller.
Failed to get ControllerId List.
Failed to get CpController object.

Exit Code: 0x01

C:\Program Files\LSI\MegaCLI>

I also tried editing cliVmWare.conf, but I have no clue what to fill in...
Should uncomment "location" and "user", fill in 127.0.0.1 and root?
Or should I leave those 2 commented out?

Also I have no clue where to set the password of it...

I tried logging in with a lot of passwords in the MegaRAID Storage Manager, but no passwords seems to work.
In the documentation I also can't find anything about a default password...

Can anyone help me out?

[Computurd]

god i had a helluva time with the CLI as well, wouldnt touch it with a ten foot pole. you need to use the megaraid storage manager (MSM). there is no password if you didnt set one, just use your computers user account name as user name. leave Password blank. unless you set one of course lemme know how you fare...

[Mastakilla]

aha

I am indeed able to login in MSM with my windows user/password
Thanks!

So did you configure cliVmWare.conf for flashing the firmware?

[Mastakilla]

sweet!

C:\Program Files\LSI\MegaCLI>MegaCli64.exe -adpfwflash -f AF2108_FW_Image.rom -a
0

Adapter 0: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i
Vendor ID: 0x1000, Device ID: 0x0079

Package version on the controller: 12.0.1-0045
Package version of the image file: 12.3.0-0022
Download Completed.
Flashing image to adapter...
Adapter 0: Flash Completed.

Exit Code: 0x00

C:\Program Files\LSI\MegaCLI>

Apparently I had to reboot to really deactivate UAC...

I also completely filled in that .conf file, not sure if that was required though...

thanks for the hints

now that the driver, firmware and software all is the latest version, I might wanne try to configure my first temporary RAID 5 as a try-out
(my 4 Seagate drives are going back next Saturday because of the clicking DOA, but 3 of them still seem to work enough to play a bit already)

[Tiltevros]

has anyone seen this one? :P im just waiting for the next firmware :P
Again LSI pass ARC

[Nizzen]

has anyone seen this one? :P im just waiting for the next firmware :P
Again LSI pass ARC

If this works soon I say

[Tiltevros]

GC is working if ur drives are compatible with it Intels are not so i have to wait for the next firmware.
The best think with this is that it works on virtual disk management

[GullLars]

If they can get TRIM added to that list also, it would be a great sales point on their end

[felix_w]

I don't know if by means of programming it is difficult or undoable, but, yeah, it would save some time from the present maintenance procedure....

[trans am]

@ computurd. get your ass in here asap! I just got the new fw and drivers today.
read here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=251365

[Computurd]

lol i just got home...this should enable fastpath! but there is a trick to it...

[trans am]

lol i just got home...this should enable fastpath! but there is a trick to it...

lol

okay paul, its been a while since we last did this crap.

is this any good? I just did the 9260 fw rebooted and set up the raid using the lsi webbios and used the auto config. installed win7 and did the basic intel chipset, ati, then rebooted and switched to ahci in asus bios rebooted and disabled index, dfrag and superfetch I didnt touch anything else.


system is:

core i3 540 @ 3.374gb [ 160x21) qpi 3534.7]
maximus III formula 1156 (1607 bios)
5850(8x) / (lsi 9260-4i 8x) split x16 8x8 (2 pcie x16 populated)
2 x 50 gb ocz vertex raid0 / 64kb stripe using lsi 9260-4i sas/raid card [Driver = Windows 7 (64-bit MegaRAID Release 4.4) 4.24.0.64 06-MAY-10 / FW MegaRAID Firmware
(MegaRAID Release 4.4) 12.6.0-0017(APP-2.60.03-0829) 06-MAY-10

4x2gb elpida hyper @ 1600 / 7-7-7-24-72 1t


these are using lsi webbios AUTO raid0 config (ctrl H) ncq enbled









---------------------------------------------------
heres the lsi config:









----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
now after going into msm in windows I set the rest like we did on indlinx/barfoot

no option for "adaptive read ahead" so I just used "read ahead" etc.. benched again..
see changes:











---------------------------------------------------------------------

side by side compare after changes. NCQ is still enabled

[GullLars]

It would seem you are caching the entire 256MB ATTO test file, or most of it.
Try using a 2GB test file.

Also, AS SSD numbers would be nice.

[Computurd]

@trans am...
try using iometer or crystal bench mark. also everest is a pretty good tool for latency testing. also the winsat disk test within windows is about the best imo.

elevate a cmd prompt to admin status. then when cmd box opens up type in:
winsat disk

that will give ya some good numbers there. most of your numbers up there are cache, as gullars points out. atto is trash anyways dont even bother.

[GullLars]

atto is trash anyways dont even bother.

Beg to differ, but if you use it for the right purposes and know what you're looking at. It gives you a comprehensive dataset quickly. Just always keep in mind, ATTO usually gives best-case numbers, they are sequential, and default QD is 4, but you can change it.

I like to use ATTO at QD 2 (it annoys me QD 1 is not avalible) to chart sequential read/write scaling by block size, and to look for possible problems (drops or inconsistencies) as more quantitivly suppliment to CDM and AS SSD. IOmeter is ofc more accurate and can give you more extensive data sets, but it's much more work gathering and enterpreting the data there.

[Computurd]

atto is the most inconsistent benchmark i have ever seen. run it consecutively a few times under different conditions and you will see. set adaptive read ahead on just about any raid controller and watch those numbers go crazy.
i guess i should refine my statement. for hardware raid cards atto is trash.
it is easily confused by things such as read ahead, and gives out very inconsistent numbers. any benchmark that gives out widely unreproducible results makes me question it heavily. seems to have problems with ssd in general, more specifically of course the raid cards. it does have an easy to read format, i agree whole heatedly with that. if only it was more reliable. they need to get better testing tools for storage in general though, this has been a big complaint of mine for ages

[Sn0wm@n]

Yes, the card will work with 3Gb/s SATA and SAS drives, I meant that 6Gb/s functionality is available only on certain SAS drives but not on any SATA drives.

huh??? and what those founctionality be... besides the error reporting cappability of sas .....

[Computurd]

....................

[Computurd]