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Date:      Fri, 11 May 2007 15:01:32 +0100
From:      Tom Judge <tom@tomjudge.com>
To:        Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
Cc:        freebsd-performance@freebsd.org, Randy Schultz <schulra@earlham.edu>
Subject:   Re: possible issues with Dell/Perc5 raid
Message-ID:  <4644773C.1050703@tomjudge.com>
In-Reply-To: <20070511094217.018c6a2b.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.64.0705101545340.34925@tdream.lly.earlham.edu> <20070511094217.018c6a2b.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>

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Bill Moran wrote:
> In response to Randy Schultz <schulra@earlham.edu>:
> 
>> Hi there,
>>
>> We just purchased a Dell 860 with these specifics:
>>    - dual core pentium 915, 2.8 GHz, 800MHz FSB
>>    - 2x512 MB 533 MHz DDR2 RAM
>>    - Dell's SAS/SATA drive controller(which is actually an LSILogic)
>>    - their 5IR PCI-Express internal RAID controller
>>    - a pair of 250 GB SATA II's set up RAID 1
>>
>> After installing 6.2-RELEASE on the system I noticed, while pulling the ports
>> collection off the CDROM, that the speed to the drives started out just fine
>> but long before the ports collection was installed the transfer rate was down
>> to ~35kB/s.  Huh.  So I started paying closer attention.  I installed a couple
>> of ports and every time there was anything but miniscule data being
>> transferred to/from disk the transfer rate bottomed out.  I installed the
>> blogbench port and it confirmed the I/O as tremendously sluggish.  I've
>> attached the output of the blogbench runs.  The first is from an old 700 MHz
>> pc, Acer M25C mobo, with 1 IDE drive just for comparison.  The second data set
>> is the new Dell.  I've also attached the output of dmesg.  Everything looks
>> fine except for the mpt lines.  Would those be telling of something amiss or
>> are they innocuous barks?
>>
>> I understand that RAID 1 is not the fastest but I certainly expected it to be
>> faster than it is, esp. with hw RAID.  Are my expectations too high and this
>> is normal?
> 
> My personal server is a Dell 860 configured very similarly to yours,
> with the difference that it has a single 160G SATA drive (no RAID).
> It's also running 6.2.
<SNIP>
> 
> Certainly looks like that RAID card sucks.  Unfortunately, I don't know
> what those mpt0 alerts are about.
> 

I think that the alerts are related an internal array resync (quote from 
a message to stable@ by Matthew Jacob the mpt driver author):

<QUOTE>
 > A perhaps unrealted issue:
 > I've noticed a large number of messages being produced by the mpt driver
 > after boot occuring approximately every 90 seconds.
 >
 > Apr  1 15:51:43 moses kernel: mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x14
 > Apr  1 15:51:43 moses kernel: mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event
 > 0x14 (ACK not required).
 > Apr  1 15:53:19 moses kernel: mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x14
 > Apr  1 15:53:19 moses kernel: mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event
 > 0x14 (ACK not required).
 >
 > Any thoughts anyone? Is there any way to find out what the events
 > correspond to?
 >

MPI spec, instantiated in MPILIB

MPI_EVENT_IR_RESYNC_UPDATE

internal raid resync update?

</QUOTE>

Tom




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