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

[Mastakilla]

After the Full initialization, I did a successful consistency check (so without creation a partition and it didn't warn for the RAID5 to be uninitialized)
Then I rebooted, created a ntfs partition (as before) and then I started another consistency check and again it didn't warn for the RAID5 to be uninitialized (which is still running now)

So the problem seems solved, but I'm still not sure what the problem / solution now was...

It seems like the fast initialization doesn't do its job very well or something

edit: the consistency check with the NTFS partition has succeeded

[Mastakilla]

Hi again...

Now that the consistency check was successfull, I know the RAID5 is currently in good shape.

But I was wondering how I could keep an eye on my indivual HDs themselves?
I havent found an application that was able to read SMART values while they are in RAID5. Also in LSI MSM I cannot find that option...

Can anyone tell me
1) How to check the SMART values of my HDs?
2) Does the LSI controller perhaps have some build in "replacement" for verifying the HDs health?

Thanks!

edit:
I just found the following very interesting page about how Dells PERC controllers keep an array "healthy":
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global...0212-Habas.pdf
This explains the terms "consistency check", "patrol read" and "SMART" pretty well and understandable.
I suppose that LSI controllers work in the same way...

Also I found in the LSI manual that the WebBIOS has an option to change the SMART polling value (didn't find it back in LSI MSM though?).
This indicates that LSI does use SMART to keep an eye on the HDs health.

Only I still would like to be able to see the actual SMART values in some tool. My HDs are officially not supported by LSI, so I would like to check if the LSI is able to read SMART from my HDs...

So does anyone know how to do this?

[F@32]

Gents, do you know if FW is any good on Intel RS2BL040 clone of 9260-4i: http://www.intel.com/products/server...0-overview.htm
It was going for nice discount compared vs. LSI at newegg. Sold out at the moment.

[Kristoferr]

And first impression is quite dissapointing. Specially because i just had Adaptec 5805 on my hand and it performed good.
I still wanted sata3 controller for my Crucial C300 x4 and so decided to get LSI.
To the problem. Look at sequental reads.



New firmware didnt help much
New bios didnt help much
New drivers didnt help much
I even installed fresh windows7 on to lsi hosted raid 0. Didnt help at all.
Tried different stripe sizes. Didnt help.
I honestly dont know what i have to do to get a decent 1000+ MBs reads out of this controller.
:HELP!:

Same drives on Sata2 Adaptec 5805 got 1200MBs burst and around 980MBs sequental reads, which is pretty much the limit of 4x sata2 lines.

Now im expecting 1300+MBs from LSI + 4x C300s and cant get even 600 out of it.
Any ideas guys/girls?

[Anvil]

Create a softraid. (generally not bootable)
(means using the drives in passthrough mode and creating the stripe using windows disk management)

[Kristoferr]

Create a softraid. (generally not bootable)
(means using the drives in passthrough mode and creating the stripe using windows disk management)

Ok i got 1314MBs reads with soft raid now. thats good enought. But can you give explanation why controller raid isnt working? Is it some firmware bug or what is it?
I would really get it to work and run win7 from drives.

[Computurd]

what is your motherboard? and does it have NF200 on it?

[Kristoferr]

Its Gigabyte 790FXTA-UD5 Running PII X4 @ 3,75Ghz....
Whats NF200?

[Anvil]

The controller raid is working, just not to your expectations.
The 9211 is not a sequential performer, it never was, it's great for SW raid and random IO though.

You should have gotten the 9260, I know it's in a different price range but it's what you want/need to buy.

Probably not the answer you were hoping for.

[Anvil]

Have a look at the ATTO benchmark, it tells the story.

The max sequential throuhgput is between 128-256. (128 happens to be 2x the stripe size on the 9211 and will always be max throughput)

The benchmarks you are using (AS SSD, CDM) are using a larger block size when measuring the sequential throughput, possibly 1024KB or more.
If you run HD Tune with a block size of 128 or 256 you should be able to reproduce.

[Kristoferr]

The controller raid is working, just not to your expectations.
The 9211 is not a sequential performer, it never was, it's great for SW raid and random IO though.

You should have gotten the 9260, I know it's in a different price range but it's what you want/need to buy.

Probably not the answer you were hoping for.

You are damn right that its not what i was hoping for. LSI advertises the controller as sata3 controller and 2GBs speeds. All its raid0 good for right now is 500mbs sequentals.
Then windows softraid can do 1300+mbs through the controller, with my drives. Why the hell controllers raid sucks balls then?


btw. Windows softraid beats controller raid in every single stat. starting from sequentals and finishing with access times.

Im going to write to LSI support. Hopefully they offer some sort of solution.

Big thanks to you Anvil. Without your knowledge i could not figure it out by myself.

[Computurd]

its s HBA (host bus adapter), not a true raid card. so its stripe size is limited to 64, being why you are reaching limitations with the speed of course. however, i reached speeds of 990 mb/s with 8 vertexes so there is something going on here with your board imo. would be hard to figure though, i d nt know shat about the amd chipsets. there are other things you can try to maximize throughput. does your board have a maximum pci-s packet setting?

[Computurd]

actually my 990 was at randoms, the max sequential was 1024...

[Computurd]

so dont get dissapointed so fast, there is something going on here you just have to troubleshoot, unless there is some incompatibility with your motherboard.

[Anvil]

Computurd,

8 drives is double the amount of drives he's got to play with. (it doesn't matter if he's got 6Gb/s devices)

As I commented, if you look at the ATTO benchmark, the throughput is there, it's just that is located around 128KB-256KB and not where the typical benchmarks programs are measuring the throughput for sequential io's.
It should be easily reproducible using HD Tune using 128KB block size or iometer using the same block size.

[Computurd]

well i can agree with that.... i just think there may be a little more that he could get from it with some tweaking, but you are correct, in the end it isnt going to give him what he is looking for, regardless of the amount of tweaking.

[Kristoferr]

OK. Thanks for answers.
So i need LSI Megaraid series card for my needs? 9240-4i is the entry line. That should be able to give me the sequentials what i am looking for?
Im really dissapointed about lack of information on LSI 9211 series raid cards. I mean, why do they even make those HBA cards at sata3 if they are not even close to the sata3 speed requiements. And there is ZERO information about the limitation on their page.
Honestly. I starting to look some other brand now. This is discrace for LSI.
Silly me. I should have asked here, before i bought it. All info i found in forums and other pages suggested that 9211-4i is up to its task with 4x c300. Now i know, it clearly isnt!!!

[F@32]

OK. Thanks for answers.
So i need LSI Megaraid series card for my needs? 9240-4i is the entry line. That should be able to give me the sequentials what i am looking for?

I wouldn't give up so quickly. But it's 9260-4i not 9240.

[Kristoferr]

9240-4i is the lowest cost of the series or im i wrong? 40 doesnt have on board cache. That should be the only difference. I can be wrong again tho...
Anyway. I already ordered 9260-4i because price difference wanst too much. So i cant go wrong this time

[One_Hertz]

OK. Thanks for answers.
So i need LSI Megaraid series card for my needs? 9240-4i is the entry line. That should be able to give me the sequentials what i am looking for?
Im really dissapointed about lack of information on LSI 9211 series raid cards. I mean, why do they even make those HBA cards at sata3 if they are not even close to the sata3 speed requiements. And there is ZERO information about the limitation on their page.
Honestly. I starting to look some other brand now. This is discrace for LSI.
Silly me. I should have asked here, before i bought it. All info i found in forums and other pages suggested that 9211-4i is up to its task with 4x c300. Now i know, it clearly isnt!!!

Just to make sure you understand - you ARE reaching 1.37GB/s reads at 128kb block size.

[Anvil]

Just to make sure you understand - you ARE reaching 1.37GB/s reads at 128kb block size.

That's what I was trying to point out, I'm just not shure if he got it.

The 9211 is ultra-fast, just not for the sort of benchmarks he's been using.

In reality, it's almost as fast as the 9260 without FastPath.

[Kristoferr]

i got that its fast at 128kb block size but thats pretty much it. It isnt fast enought while reading big files in sequental way? Or im getting it wrong again?
Anyway. I probably put the 9211 on to the HDDs or sell it in forums. Not too big loss since it was cheap.

[SteveRo]

One Hertz! nice to see you, seems like it's been a while!

[Computurd]

really how often are you reading files much larger than 128kb? that card is a screamer man, ultra low latency and snappy as hell. i love it ! it is fast as heck, and very low overhead. in real world testing against the 9260 that i did (pre-fastpath) it was right there with the 9260 on game loads, etc. there is a point of diminishing returns of course. much over what you already have there isnt going to yield huge returns. ...unless you are doing tons of writing id stick with it, the cache on the 9260 is good for writing, of course.

[Kristoferr]

really how often are you reading files much larger than 128kb?

Thats about it. Im doing it every day. Thats why im developing raid in the first place. Otherwise i would stick to 1 SSD only because "in the real world" theres not much difference between one good SSD and SSDs in raid 0.
I am sports market analyst in real world and im working files with a size of 1GB+ daily.