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Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

 
pgabhi444
New Member

HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

Hi All,

We are in treble with HP Lefthand P4300 SAN Storage because of its slow write speed. Its average write speed is 4 mbps and reading speed is 34 mbps

 

We are using this server for our oracle database, whenever oracle DB pushing huge data (multiple commit) to storage its take time to finishing it.

I tried to copy a 3GB of file to storage from another server , it took almost 6 min with average speed of 3mbps and when the same file copying from storage to the another server, its taking only 3min with average speed of 34mbps

 

Please help me to increase the data write speed ….

 

By abhi

 

 

 P.S.This thread has been moved from Storage Area Networks (SAN) (Small and Medium Business)to HP StoreVirtual / HP LeftHand Storage- HP Forums Moderator

11 REPLIES 11
Patrick Terlisten
Honored Contributor

Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

Hello,

 

can you tell us a litte more about your enviroment?

 

  • Which version of SAN/iQ do you use?
  • How many nodes are in the cluster?
  • How is the cluster connected to the network?
  • What OS is running on your database server?
  • Is your database server a VM or a physical machine?
  • If it's a VM, what virtualization software do you use?

Regards,

Patrick

Best regards,
Patrick
AndrewNCS
New Member

Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

Hi,

 

We're experiencing a similar thing on a brand new install we're currently testing on :

 

  • Which version of SAN/iQ do you use?
  • 10.5 build 0148
  • How many nodes are in the cluster?
  • 2 nodes - both HP Proliant DL-360 Gen8
  • How is the cluster connected to the network?
  • Dedicated HP 1910 switches
  • What OS is running on your database server?
  • Windows 2012 Datacenter
  • Is your database server a VM or a physical machine?
  • Database are on Virtual 2012 server
  • If it's a VM, what virtualization software do you use?
  • Running windows 2012 HyperV 3

As we have only 2 nodes and only 2 SAN nodes we're not using the HP DSM MPIO - we have teamed the NICs under Windows 2012 connecting to all brand new HP switches

 

Hope that's enough information.

 

Thanks,

Andrew

oikjn
Honored Contributor

Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

Andrew,

     Are you running VSAs or hardware lefthand nodes?

 

Make sure you have flow control on for everything.

 

Actually follow the best practice guides HP gives.  For Hyper-V there is NO reason not to use their DSM... it will be faster. 

 

Unless something has changed, Microsoft has never supported teaming nics for iSCSI traffic so go back to the HP DSM and you can get your bandwidth and availability the supported way.

Emilo
Trusted Contributor

Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

Can you do me a big favor and check something for me?

Start https://xxx.xxx.xxx:2381 x= ip address of the nodes.

Passoword for System Insight Management Page is user "sanmon" password "sanmon"

Check the P410 controller and make sure that your cache is enabled and that the ratio is set to 50/50

this was a know bug on those models.

There was a known issue where the write cache was disabled or set to 100/0

 

If it is just apply the latest patch set Patch Set 10.5 PS01 it was released on 5/6/2013

 

 

 

Prakash Singh_1
HPE Pro

Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

Hi,

 

For P4000 SAN solutions querries you can also visit the HP Guided troubleshooting tree performance option.

 

Below is the link for HPGT:

 

http://h20584.www2.hp.com/hpgt/guides/select?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=3936136&lang=en&cc=us

Regards,

PS
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ryan_1212
Advisor

Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

I think you need a higher end switch with larger port buffers, not sure if it is the main issue but something to consider.  We have been running procurve 3400cl's for many years and they perform quite well.  We formerly tried 2510-G and they did not perform as well because of the port buffers being small (we think)

oikjn
Honored Contributor

Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

the 1910 might be a bit underpowered, but it should be enough here and probably isn't the cause of this issue.  If it was, they should at least be able to see a backlog on the switch or errors on the switch.

 

I'm unfortunately underfunded and have to share 1910's for iSCSI and production, but fortunately its been able to keep up with our needs which are easily above the OP's 4/34MB performance claim.

 

Either the OP's running w/ 512B cluster random IO size which might explain the slow throughput or there is something else going on.  Given he never responded to any requests for additional information it was probably something simple and fixed right after the post.

Sbrown
Valued Contributor

Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

Check the ports for dropped packets, if there are no deferred packets and only dropped, you probably did not setup flow control. It is essential for flow control to be working.

 

If you setup flow control per nic, then bonded them, you have to setup flow control on the bond link (!!) otherwise you have no flow control.

 

It's not abnormal to see deferred tx when congestion occurs, but you should only have a half dozen drop tx in a day if flow control is working.

 

Do not use jumbo frames.

 

ESXi defaults to delayed ack off in 4 and enabled in 5 - think of delayed ACK like NCQ. When you have congestion problems and can not provide lossless ethernet (DCB/PFC) you probably want to drop back to disabling delayed ack.

 

Also i've found (esx 4) that round robin doesn't improve performance, if you have many vm's it may be better to let each vm have a single port and live with the gigabit (or 10 gigabit) limit - you end up shorting yourself with IOPS=1 (great random, poor linear) or default IOPS=1000 (great linear, poor random).

 

I'm kind of disappointed that thin reclamation has been ignored for 3PAR. If they could get SCSI-UNMAP working, you could just rock VSA's and you wouldn't really need 3par.

 

I'm also disappointed to find the replaced lefthand node that died was set to a 1.2GB STRIPE, so if you change 1 byte, it has to write 256kb to each drive (8) which pushes latency through the roof. The other boxes were set to 25/75 cache ratio and this one was set to 50/50 too! 10/90 is optimal for smartarray!

 

Do you self a favor, go into the bios, enable MAX/MAX/MAX performance mode, disable C1e, C1, boot up the ACU and restripe to smaller stripe size (or rebuild the cluster), set the cache mode to 10/90 - and try a few things out.

 

You will be surprised how great lefthands are at linear i/o but how poor they are random i/o due to improper settings which are not controllable with CMC!

 

Double check your flow control! It is best to set it to TX/RX on each interface, bond them , then set the bond to TX/RX otherwise it will not work at all!

 

ESXi and windows defaults to flow control on (auto). HP switches default to it OFF.

 

ESXi 4 defaults to DELAYED ACK OFF, ESXi 5 default to DELAYED ACK ON -> with more than dozen dropped packets a day, i suggest DELAYED ACK OFF. It is the network equivalent to NCQ.

 

Remember no matter what folks say, the SCSI storage stack is not designed to deal with missing data, retransmits. Do anything you must (QOS,flow control) to ensure packets get through at any cost otherwise performance will plummet.

 

(similar rules apply to hyper-v , never assume trunking or mpio are better, try each one with your environment!!).

 

I love the VSA - they should have a program where you can trade in your hardware for VSA licenses like give them the lefthands back and get a 10-pack of VSA - folks would be all over that. Guess why? you get to roll your own hardware and lay other vm's on the same gear for less $$$. HP would still get their awesome license/support fees. It is the software-defined storage way that HP preaches to us..

 

Dude on ebay has 10gb 24port switches for $1300 - might budget that in. You can get the same nic that HP sells for the lefthands for $100 and a 4gb stick of ram(RDIMM ECC 4gb) for $20. The P4300G2 is only ram-optimal with 3 dimms and the newer ones are 4 dimms. I never understood why they put 1 dimm in.

 

ALL P4300 and Most P4300G2 have expired their BBWC batteries by now. 3 years is the maximum.  Change them before they degrade and timeout city.

RichardH_Aus
New Member

Re: HP lefthand P4300 Storage write speed is too slow

Is there a way to alter the cache ratio or enable/disable the cache?

 

I can log into the CLI only by hitting "F8" when connected to the P4300's console during booting.  This gives me a CLI prompt similar to what you get with hpacucli but with a very restricted set of commands - I cannot use the commands that are normally used to adjust the P410's settings.

 

I realise this is an old thread - hopefully someone knows what can be done here?