Which is the best RAID configuration for a ML350 G5 server?

[J.C.Saavedra]

My server has a disk performance issue with RAID 5 and e200i controller.

I think that RAID performance is the problem. The main symptom is similar to a disk with some bad sectors. By example, when you run some shared applications from a client it takes much time to read/write the data, but it never occurs the same. First time you open a shared application it can wait 15 seconds to start, then when you close the application and run it again, it takes 2-3 seconds to start. If you continue this test again and again, suddenly it takes more than 15 seconds to start. This problem appears into the applications too, by example, if you record some data forms, sometime this operation is fast but sometimes very low.

It is incredible, but I have change RAID tripe size from 64K to 32K, 32K to 16K and I have not found much differences. I was testing by change/update the RAID controller driver for this server and no results were got.

I think is anormal that all changes were made in RAID configuration gave same results. I do not know if controller driver do not give more
performance in Windows SBS R2 for example.

Disk speed on server: Average 20MB/sec Network speed client (100Mb) to server (Giga): Average 4 MB/sec.

The symptom appears suddenly, so disk performance on the server can be the problem or it seems.

My server have 3x146 GB SAS disk, RAID 5 configuration and 128 Mb BWWC. I want to change the RAID configuration to another one that give better file server performance.

Which do you recommend?, I do not wish to buy new drives or controller but I could to do it if it is quite neccesary.

Regards,

Juan Carlos

[Marc Sturdevant]

A few questions first; Is this Server 2003 and if so are you running DFS? IF you are I had the same issue it might be a DFS issue with replicating.
Also, are your files large like AutoCAD drawings or just regular Office type of files? I know from my past experences with storing AutoCAD drawings you had to adjust the blocks accordingly IE larger then normal.

[J.C.Saavedra]

Thank you for your response.

I am not sure if DFS is running on the server but I am sure DFS is not configured.

The clients are using simple database files and tables that are shared on the network. Much of these files are small.

I want a simple file server but I have found poor performance with a common configuration for this server. For RAID 5 I did not found good performance with different stripe size and using or not BWWC for write cache. It is very strange.

Regards,

Juan Carlos