MSA 1500 & MSA 20

[Alex Onos]

Hi there..
Does anyone have this combination working properly?
We are using the MSA1500 in combination with 1 msa30 and 1 msa20. Performance on the msa30 is stable and good enough, however we can't seem to get the msa20 to perform normal.
Firmware on the msa1500: 5.20, msa20: 2.02
HBA qla2340(hp drivers) set point to point only
Fibrechannel speed is set to 2gbps.

Problems we experience:
When we copy large files (using total commander to view speed) to scsi array's we see a steady performance of arround 30mbps.
Copying the same files to one of the sata array's, the performance fluctuates between 2mbps and 32mbs.
All cache battery's are good and fully loaded cache is used 50% read 50% write.

I'm beginning to get a bit desperate for we are experiencing performance problems eversince we bought the d*** msa20.

Any suggestion is welcome,
Thanks,
Alex

[James Muell]

First, What is the MSA1500 fw ver? I haven't seen or heard of 520. I run fw 5.10 and 6.86

Second, SCSI will most likely always beat the MSA in performance tests like your copy test. To the best of my knowledge the MSA controllers are still rated @ 160mb/s. They have never been updated.

Third, the SATA drive speeds are no match for SCSI 10 and 15k speeds. The SFF drives run at 5,400 RPM and the 3.5" run at 7,200 RPM. ***Both drives have a SATA 1.5 Gb/s interface.

[James Muell]

Follow up NOTE from HP site:
Customers should use SATA in servers and bulk storage with non-mission critical and non HDD intensive applications where minimal downtime is acceptable like static web pages, firewall, DNS, and file and print server applications. Additionally, low cost bulk storage for reference data repositories and nearline tape augmentation are another primary use of SATA drives.

Customers are encouraged to use SAS and SCSI HDD for their mission critical and HDD intensive applications.

[Alex Onos]

MSA 1500 fw can by found here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=443350&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=415598&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1005

MSA20 is used in D2D2T backup configurations, as described in several hp white papers. It depends on your definition on mission critical where you want to use it for. We use the msa30 for our databases.
Anyway upgrading the firmware to 5.20 and 2.02 did improve the performance however I'm conveinced it could do better or al least more consistent.

[James Muell]

Thanks, Yes i found it after i sent my comments. We tested performance extensively with the MSA for a customer and found it could not compete with SCSI connected disk shelf. It is not designed for high performance, it is designed for distributed performance for multiple hosts. That's when you will max out the 2gb backplane.