VA 7100 slow performance

[Ramon Beringer]

Hello everyone,
I need help with my VA 7100 cause there is a big perfomance problem . . . :o(

Configuration :
I have a LPR 2000 Server with Windows 2000 Server and 2*2 Disks wich are running as RAID 1 Sets on the Netraid 1M. Performance here is 25-30 MB/s (messed with Perforance Assesment Tool). And then there is one "Agilent HHBA-510x FC Controller" (Driver ver. 3.0.4106.0) where one VA7100 with 6*73GB Disks is directly connectet. If I measering the Perfomance here with the PAT from HP then I get an rate about 3-4 MB/s !!!!!

Here are the configuration settings from the VA7100:

Array :
Data Resiliency - normal
Subsystem Level RAID Control - HP Autoraid
Hotspare - None

Controller M/C01 Settings:
Port ID 110
Port Behavior - Windows 2000
Port Topologie - Privat Loop

Controller M/C02 Settings:
Port ID 108
Port Behavior - Windows 2000
Port Topologie - Privat Loop

Secure Manager - Disabled

Any Ideas ???

[Vincent Fleming]

More information is needed:

What version of firmware is on the VA?

How many drives? What size and speed drives?

How much cache?

Something sounds amiss...

[Ramon Beringer]

Hello Vincent,
thanks for your interrest to help me...

the Firmware Version is HP13.
But i have a call at HP for version 14/15... still waiting...

In the VA7100 are 7 Drives (73GB/15k)

Cache.... ?!?
I don't find any information about the cache in the command view sdm... but I think at least 512MB...

CU

[Vincent Fleming]

Ramon,

HP13 has known performance issues. Upgrade to HP15 when it comes out.

Meanwhile, there are a few things you can do to maximize your performance with HP13.

First, pre-allocate your LUNs. By this I mean write to the LUN... every block. In UNIX, I use "dd if=/dev/null bs=64k of=/dev/rdsk/c1t0d0" to get the job done. I hope you can translate that into Windoze. Perhaps you can just do a full format with surface scan on the LUN, or something like a format from the host adapter BIOS.

Afterward, check your performance - it should write to the LUN much faster. (hint: there's a bug in the FW that makes it slow the *first* time you write to a block. Afterwards, performance is better)

Changing your array mode to High Performance from Normal should also help with this. I don't recommend running your system in High Performance mode for long, however - it does not sync the maps to the disk at all in HP mode.

Good luck! Let us know how it works.