Write performance MSA1000 with RAID5

[Paridaens Robrecht]

We installed 2 Proliant servers with an MSA1000 each. Both machines are installed identically with W2003, one of them with the Enterprise version. The MSA1000 is directly connected via 1, resp. 2 Gbit HBA's and has 1, resp. 2 controllers (no fiber switch).
We noticed a poor performance on every RAID5-drive we created, especially when writing to the disk. Even the internal RAID on the server was much faster. Our 4 year old SAP-server with an RA4100 was almost as fast as this new MSA1000.
HP could not solve the problem. We swapped the HBA's, loaded new drivers, put a fiber switch in between, ... nothing could help us.
Is there anyone out there who has experienced the same performance drop with RAID5 ?

Note : we tested by creating an 10 Gb database with SQL2003, which took us 15 minutes or more. A Proliant ML530 test-machine did it in less than 3 minutes ! Other measurements (copying under Windows, restoring a tape, ...) confirmed the earlier tests.

[Stephen Kebbell · Accepted solution]

Hello,

we had a customer with a similar problem (bad write performance for RAID5 in an MSA1000 under Win2003). HP managed to solve it. There's an option in Windows 2003 Device Manager:
Please Enable Advanced Performance under the MSA1000 Volume SCSI Disk Device (or Compaq SecurePath Disk) Properties Policies Tab -> Optimize for Performance -> Enable Advanced Performance.
You might need to reboot the server(s) for this to take effect.
Hope this helps.

Regards,
Stephen

[Paridaens Robrecht]

Many thanks to Stephen Kebbell for his quick respons. His suggestion did help : write performance improved by 90% (almost twice as fast), read performance improved 10% (no logical explanation ; could be statistical variance).
I was surprised however that write caching was enabled by default. This is a rather risky option, except when the MSA1000 provides for its own battery backup. We do have an UPS of course, but I would not like to rely on this alone.
It's surprising that 3 HP-guys that examined our problem for half a day could not give this answer. Good job Stephen !

[Stephen Kebbell]

You're welcome! :-)
Glad I could help.

Stephen

[david5337_1]

Is there same issue when I use the w2k os server?
And will I do this same opperation?
Thank you!

[Stephen Kebbell]

Hi David,

I don't think this option exists under Win2K.
There's an option for write cache for the disk in device manager, although I don't know if it's recommended to enable this.
Check your cache settings in ACU.

Regards,
Stephen

[Anthony_117]

Hi Guys,

We are currently still on Windows 2000 SP4 servers and we are impacted in similar ways on this FCA2101 and MSA1000 SAN infrastructure. Out of 4 servers, 2 with higher load (higher read and write access) are having major performance issue, which is affecting the service availability and reliability.

Is there any solution for the Windows 2000 platform?