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Date:      Wed, 4 Oct 2006 09:12:48 -0400
From:      "Gibson, Jasen \(GE Indust, ConsInd, consultant\)" <jasen.gibson@ge.com>
To:        <freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: suggestions for SATA RAID cards
Message-ID:  <888F5D88060A214ABEFED0011CF18662011FF937@LOUMLVEM03.e2k.ad.ge.com>

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-----Original Message-----
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 18:02:30 +0100 (BST)
From: Chris Hedley <cbh-freebsd-current@groups.chrishedley.com>
Subject: Re: suggestions for SATA RAID cards

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, Barkley Vowk wrote:
>> Little late to the game on this post...

>Even later here, but I thought I may as well throw in my tuppence worth =

>since I'm going through this again at the moment.
>
>I have an Adaptec 2410SA coupled to 4 250GB discs.  I strongly =
recommend=20
>avoiding it: terrible performance, on RAID5 or 10 partitions I get =
around=20
>30-40 MB/s on reads and between 3 and 6 MB/s on writes.  Performance is =

>probably better if using write back caching on the card and discs, but=20
>nobody here will be doing that, right?  Its other main "issue" is more=20
>timeouts than you can shake a stick at under load, and unless you can =
kill=20
>off the offending process, the reset button's the only way out.  I =
tested=20
>its ability to rebuild its sets after simulating a disc failure by=20
>removing one of the hot-swap trays, which it repaired without any =
issues=20
>other than the time it took; I eventually got fed up with hanging =
around=20
>for it to finish, but it was somewhere between 6 and 12 hours.
>
>I suspect I'll go for the Areca this time around, but I think I'll=20
>approach it with rather more caution as I don't want to find myself =
with=20
>another lemon like the 2410SA!
>
>Chris.

I'm using the same card, Chris.  My setup is a Tyan S2881 dual Opteron =
board and 4 WD RE2 400GB drives in a RAID 5.
My speed varies greatly, depending how large a file I'm accessing (which =
is an expected result, I think).  Files less than a GB, write at about =
around 130MB/s, read between 400-600MB/s  (have not ruled out whether =
cache is helping boost this number).  Files over 10GB this drops to a =
read speed of 40GB, like you've seen.  But the write speed will stay up =
at around 90!  It's very odd.  I've been seeing similar posts to this =
for a while now, concerning Highpoint, 3ware, Qlogic, and Adaptec cards =
and freebsd 5.4+; it almost makes me wonder if there's not another =
factor here, drivers or something.
I have not seen any of the timeouts you mention.  Considering I'm =
running a Mysql-driven forum off of this, Mysql should be hanging up =
quite often if this were happening.
I've just been using dd to come up with these numbers.  Are there any =
true disk benchmarking utils out there for BSD?=20



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