ML330 slow with IDE Raid 1

[Michael Jezard]

Having configured for Raid 1 with twp 80Gb drives and 1.25Gb ram, my ML330 has taken just under 1.5hrs to get to the first graphical install screen of W2003 server and I still have the setup to go (another 40 minutes it tells me!)

This is my 2nd shot at this, having reset everything and reinstalled per support desk request.

first time around I ran a speed test (Passmark performance test 5.0) and found that I was only getting a write speed of 5Mb/sec. My old pc has a 12Mb/sec write speed !

Should I have left the Raid 1 well alone?, what speeds/performance are others getting with this server, I realize that it is "low end", but this is miserable.

[Nault]

Hi

Do you try to flash you bios. I try this because my server install of w2k3 it to slow and it resolve my problem.

[Michael Jezard]

My BIOS was apparently the latest ( D15 dated 2003.11.01 )

I don't want to take the risk of "reflashing" if it s still the same BIOS, and as it has a checksum, I figure it's OK.

was your BIOS a lower revision?

Michael Jezard

[Brian_Murdoch]

Michael,

Are you manually installing the driver for the ATA/100 raid at W2K3 installation time, i.e. via F6 when prompted?

HP fixed a low performance issue with data transfer in driver version 4.1.502.2003 but there is now a newer driver available, 4.1.730.2003 which can be downloaded from the following link and used with F6. Hopefully it will be better than your current situation.

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/18828.html

Regards,

Brian

[Michael Jezard]

I am running the latest driver as well :-(


Is there any chance I can get someone to try to use the Passmark performance test and see if they get similar results to me?.

Maybe I'm expecting too much from an IDE RAID controller running RAID 1

the passmark software I'm running is the eval from www.passmark.com

I'm getting:

Sequential Read 19.8Mb/sec
Sequential Write 5.5Mb/sec
Random seek + RW 2.0Mb/sec
Disk Mark 71.5
PassMark Rating 14.3

Am I expecting too much ????

[Wagner_14]

Hi,

we also have these kinds of perfomance problems. At the moment we're using ML330G3,
2x2,4Ghz Xeon and 2GB RAM with a raid 0+1
configuration. (we'll use the machines as entry level servers).

With current ML330G3 bios and the current driver the raid perfomance is as bad as you described. (with +0 perhaps a little bit better)

write average 15-20 MB/s, read average about 50Mb /s. In the past weeks we recognized some problems with the LSI (CSB6) controller
onboard. Some weird error messages were reported. (disk error entry, LSI timeout for about 5 seconds once a day e.g.)
But the harddisk and the controller were ok.

The point was that the controller had problems with the perfomance, applications like RIS, SQL "overloads" the onboard controller. Current performance test shows about 1MB/s write perfomance e.g.
(and it was only an active MS SQL server with
an average load) and so on.

We tested with the ML330G3 also a DawiControl DC133 or Promise controller in a 0+1 environment and both controllers reported in average a 3 times better perfomance than the onboard one.
(about 50-60MB/s write and and about 60-90MB/s read.)

Ok, there's no integrated CIM functionality but the old onboard legacy LSI product (Megaraid ATA100) is a bad one, with extremly bad/low perfomance.

We're wondering too, because HP takes such piece of an old controller in a machine that isn't bad. The other performance of the machine isn't bad.

[ernst limbrunner]

hi michael

1) the hardware raid is not really a hw raid. during boot time fw in the bios will take care of raid 1. when windows is loading, driver is loaded and from now on will do the raid. so in contrast to smart controllers which have their own processor, the ide raid uses the system processor. a pci card is diferent, as it usually brings its own processor.

2) do NOT connect both drives to the same cable. ide has only one active device per channel (other than scsi).

3) never use ide raid or a hw/fw solution if you need performance.

best regards
ernesto

[Michael Jezard]

The ML330 comes with two drives already connected together on the same channel/cable. Are you saying that I should recable the default setup?.

HP are advertising that this is hardware IDE RAID.

Still, if as you say it is a combination of Hardware and software, it would probably explain my woes with this server.

I actually have another posting on this forum about disabling the whole RAID system and just running as regular IDE, but no one has managed to answer whether I can disable.

Thanks


Michael

[ernst limbrunner]

hi michael

if they DO ship the system with 2 drives connected to the same cable, than it is definitely not a good configuration. gives you only half of the performance you can get.
-----------------------------------------
the ide raid in the ml310, ml330 and dl320 is NOT a genuine hw raid. there is HP internal documentation telling the truth. sales does not seem to even know that.
-----------------------------------------
i do NOT recommend to simply recable the drives. you probably will lose data. if you had a smart controller you could easily do this.
-----------------------------------------
parallel ide (ata) has only one active device per channel and hence per cable (this is NOT hp specific !!)

best regards
ernesto

ps: the ide raid is NOT a hp development (as opposed to the smart). it used to be an integrated version of the ATI megaraid controller. the driver was called megaraid.sys. have a look at the name of the current driver and use google to find out the truth - you will not find anything on the public hp sites.

[Max_60]

Hi!

I just got 5 DL320 G2 servers with P4 3.06GHz, RAID 1 enabled on 2 x 80GB HD using the default IDE cabling installed.

I too noticed very slow disk performance on install and use. Using PerformanceTest 4.0, I got performance 4 times slower than a regular P4 2,2GHz disk !!!

I did an automatic OS prep with SmartStart with latest IDE drivers 2.5.2003.6.13.

Anybody has an idea if we can rewire the IDE cables, even if it means reinstalling the whole OS ?

I need the RAID1 with a little more performance here ! I got my servers for $840 each with free HD, so I wonder if HP knew about this problem, and got rid of these lemons.