Poor performance Disk DL380 G3

[Enrique Martinez Cruz]

Hi folks!

I have a Proliant DL380 G3 and I sold 2 months ago. I configured this server with RAID 5 and have 3-72 GB 10K SCSI DISKS, I experiment poor performance when I make read/write tasks for example when I deflating a big zip files (200 MB-1 GB) the deflating take too many time when an old servers takes and a half or less of time.

Thaks for help

Henry

[Sigi J]

hi,

you did not tell anything about the raid controller you use. When you compare with your old server, was the same Raid-controller used?

In general, RAID 5 with only three disks is not really performant. Performance depends on the number of disks.

When deflating large zip-files, your server needs a lot of RAM. How much RAM is in your DL380?

[Enrique Martinez Cruz]

The DL380 G3 has a Smart Array 5i Plus, and comparing with the old server is a DL380 G2 with a Smart Array Controller (I dont know the model this server is in a hosting service)

Both with RAID 5.

the new DL380 G3 has a 4 GB of RAM and 1 P Xeon procesor 2.x GHZ

the old DL380 G2 has a 2 GB of RAM 2 PIII 1 GB procesors.

Thanks for Help

Henry

[Enrique Martinez Cruz]

Sorry I forgot both of servers have RAID 5 with three SCSI disks

[Sigi J]

Smart Array 5i Plus needs the optional battery pack which enables the write cache. Does your server have this battery module?

[Enrique Martinez Cruz]

Let me check If I have this in my server,

What could be the consecuences if I don??t have the BBWC in my servers? lose performance?

Thannks for help

[Sigi J]

Hi Henry,

yes, write performance will be very poor without write cache enabled.

[Enrique Martinez Cruz]

I check with my HP vendor, this server don??t include the BBWC option Kit, so, should I buy this? Is cause for poor performance? Why with another SCSI boards don??t have this issue, the Write Cache is included?

Thanks for Help

Henry

[Philippe Sudan]

We had the same problem with databases few months ago. We did some testing and the end result was we cut down a process of 60' to 5' just by adding the BWCC or SmartArray. From now on we always purchase new servers irrelevant of their task with the BWCC.

Cheers,
Phil

[Sigi J]

hi Henry,

yes, you should spend some extra money for BBWC.
On older SmartArray controllers the writecache modules always had batteries on board. I do not understand why this was changed. I think it is a marketing strategy, no technical reason...

Your HP vendor did not tell you about the BBWC-module? Maybe he did not know enough about the tech specs of the newest Proliant servers.