ML350 G6 Disappointing Disk Read Speeds

[David Geek]

Bleeder,

No, they were not. Do I need to reboot now that they are enabled?

[Bleeder]

Ah, that might have been it. I'm fairly certain it won't take effect until a reboot.

[David Geek]

I tried changing the write caching policy for the disk in Device Manager. However, the policy change does not save. When I place the check next to the box and click OK to close then open it backup again, the check box is removed.
Moreover, I noticed a note below the Enable write caching check box that states "This device does not allow its write cache settings to be modified"

Any ideas?

[Bleeder]

You may at least be able to enable write caching, but not advanced performance. Some vendors drivers are coded to disable it like you've seen. It looks like that's what's happening here. The important thing is that your cache is enabled on the controller. The setting in Windows was just an extra thing to try/test.

Another thing you may want to do is update your p410i firmware from 3.00 to 3.52.

[SMR]

David,

I just realized from your original post that you are referring directly to the RAID 5 logical drive, whats the performance on the RAID 1 LD?

Is this server in production?

[David Geek]

SMR

Yes this is in production now.

The RAID 1 volume has a read rate of about 100 MB/sec.

[David Geek]

Bleeder

I upgraded the P410i Firmware w/o change to the performance.

[Bleeder]

If you have no worries about power loss, you can test enabling drive write cache on each of the drives via ACU.

Also, curious, do you have the same logical drive stripe sizes on your Dell setup?