NetRaid 1M

[Patrick van Vugt]

Hello,

In two (new) servers (E800, LC2000) we have a NetRaid 1M installed.
E800: RAID 1
LC2000: RAID 5

On both systems is SCO Openserver Enterprise 5.0.6 installed.
Harddisk performance on both systems is very poor!
When we make a 200MB file without the RAID-controller, this is done in 20sec. Same test with controller: 2 minutes! This is not good.
I think it has something todo with the driver?!?!

Firmware controller; H.01.08
Firmware HDD: 80-CX03
These are all the latest.
SCO Driver is from the Netserver CD (M.04.00)

Please help, I've got two servers which are not performing as they should!

Thanks,
Patrick van Vugt

[Xavier Gutierrez]

Sorry, but I don't understand your question.

What do you mean when you say making files with/without the RAID controller?

Regards,
Xavi

[Diana Thompson]

If you are in the USA I suggest you call the HP Support Center at 970-635-1000, IF outside the US, call your local Support Center for help.

[Patrick van Vugt]

What I mean by with/without controller,

First I use the on-board SCSI-controller to make the test file of 200MB
Second I use the HP NetRaid 1M controller to make the test file of 200MB.

200MB with on-board SCSI: 20sec
200MB with NetRaid 1M: 120sec

That's 6x longer!

[Ben_16]

Hardware raid is slower than SCSI. Please call HP for more details. There is a tool call the Performance Assesment Test, http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/software/pat12.exe.html which can show you what exactly the performance is.

[Paul Draycott]

I have exactly the same problem on and E800 and LH6000.

Performance is very poor on the RAID controller.

Does anyone know the reason why or have a solution for this ?

[Patrick van Vugt]

I've found a workaround, but I must say this is NOT the solution of HP!!!

There is a amirdmon-process that you should kill. You can disable to startup the process by editing /etc/conf/rc.d/amird

Then you must set the write policy to write-back. This is the tricky part! Because the 1M doesn't support a battery backup you should have a good UPS!!!

We haven't received or heard anything official from HP yet. When I got a official solution I will post it here.

[Paul Draycott]

Many thanks, that appears to have worked !. I assume you have logged this and are progressing with HP ?

If you aren't, I will !

Regards

Paul

[Rick Hoyle]

I'm experiencing similar dismal performance using a NetRAID 2M (64M Cache w/battery) on SCO OpenServer 5.0.6. System is LC2000 with 3-drive RAID5 scattered on 2 channels.
Are you saying I can simply kill the amird daemon and the system will continue to run? Do I use the firmware setup feature to modify the "write-back" setting?
What will happen if a drive dies? Isn't it the amird's job to interact with the O/S on such occasions?

This information is invaluable, as the client is upgrading from an older Netserver that is currently running FASTER!!

Thanks much.

[Dan Moesch]

You always want write-back cache turned on for a Raid card, huge performance difference. Especially if you have a battery on the card. You can turn this on using the FAST software during the boot sequence with "ctrl a" when the card is initializing