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тАО07-31-2009 12:15 AM
тАО07-31-2009 12:15 AM
we have an Overland Neo 4100 Lib with 3 HP LTO-4 drives (2x SCSI, 1x FC). Writing to the SCSI drives is no problem. The data is first written to disk and then written to tape. This way I get 100-130 MB/s for a single job on the SCSI drives which is perfectly fine. Each LTO-4 drive has it's dedicated spool device which is able to deliver >130 MB/s read speed.
The FC drive makes some problems. It starts writing with ~100 MB/s but then drops to 30-50 MB/s.
Our retailer already replaced the LTO-4 drive and the FC HBA (qla 2462). Without success.
I'm a bit lost now. I don't see anything obvious that is wrong. Are there any special parameters I have to change in the FC HBAs BIOS? Anything else I should try?
Here are the parameters of the FC HBA:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HBA Instance 0: QLA2462 Port 1 WWPN 21-00-00-1B-32-11-ED-6E PortID 00-00-EF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Connection Options : 2 - Loop Preferred, Otherwise Point-to-Point
Data Rate : Auto
Frame Size : 2048
Hard Loop ID : 0
Loop Reset Delay (seconds) : 5
Enable Host HBA BIOS : Disabled
Enable Hard Loop ID : Disabled
Enable FC Tape Support : Enabled
Operation Mode : 0 - Interrupt for every I/O completion
Interrupt Delay Timer (100ms) : 0
Execution Throttle : 16
Login Retry Count : 8
Port Down Retry Count : 30
Enable LIP Full Login : Enabled
Link Down Timeout (seconds) : 30
Enable Target Reset : Enabled
LUNs Per Target : 128
Enable Receive Out Of Order Frame: Disabled
TIA, Ralf
Solved! Go to Solution.
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тАО08-02-2009 11:38 PM
тАО08-02-2009 11:38 PM
Re: Performance with FC Ultrium 4-SCSI LTO4 drive
And again the drive beginns with good writing speed and then drops in the second run to < 50 MB/s. But in the third run it's back with > 100 MB/s. It's just not writing with constant speed. The two SCSI drives in opposite are absolute constant at 100-120 MB/s with the same test.
$dd if=/tmp/testdata of=/dev/ULTRIUM-TD4-D3 bs=256k
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze ein
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze aus
11252613120 Bytes (11 GB) kopiert, 106,823 Sekunden, 105 MB/s
$dd if=/tmp/testdata of=/dev/ULTRIUM-TD4-D3 bs=256k
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze ein
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze aus
11252613120 Bytes (11 GB) kopiert, 236,543 Sekunden, 47,6 MB/s
$mt -f /dev/ULTRIUM-TD4-D3 rewind
$dd if=/tmp/testdata of=/dev/ULTRIUM-TD4-D3 bs=256k
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze ein
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze aus
11252613120 Bytes (11 GB) kopiert, 100,627 Sekunden, 112 MB/s
$dd if=/tmp/testdata of=/dev/ULTRIUM-TD4-D3 bs=256k
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze ein
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze aus
11252613120 Bytes (11 GB) kopiert, 235,908 Sekunden, 47,7 MB/s
$dd if=/tmp/testdata of=/dev/ULTRIUM-TD4-D3 bs=256k
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze ein
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze aus
11252613120 Bytes (11 GB) kopiert, 102,296 Sekunden, 110 MB/s
$dd if=/tmp/testdata of=/dev/ULTRIUM-TD4-D3 bs=256k
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze ein
42925+1 Datens├Г┬дtze aus
11252613120 Bytes (11 GB) kopiert, 236,189 Sekunden, 47,6 MB/s
I found some HBA parameters that could be tuned according to a IBM redbook.
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0250.html?Open
But none of the changes helped.
Anything else I should change to get the right performance with the fiber channel LTO-4 drive attached to a linux host?
I'm out of ideas, the drive and the HBA were already replace.
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тАО08-03-2009 12:57 AM
тАО08-03-2009 12:57 AM
Re: Performance with FC Ultrium 4-SCSI LTO4 drive
Can you explain exactly how the fibre is connected ?
I think the 4100 is the equivalent of the MSL5/6000 which does have some limitations with regards to LTO-4 drives...
Cheers,
Rob
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тАО08-03-2009 04:22 AM
тАО08-03-2009 04:22 AM
Re: Performance with FC Ultrium 4-SCSI LTO4 drive
The two SCSI LTO-4 drives are each connected to a SCSI HBA and the changer also has it's own SCSI HBA.
I've no general problem with LTO-4 drives, the two SCSI drives are performing perfectly fine. It's just the FC drive that shows these problems.
Today I moved the FC drive from the slave lib to the master lib (each 60 slots), no change. Then I connected the FC cable of the FC drive with a different HBA in the same server where I never had performance issues with RAID devices before. Same problem.
The strange thing is that I see the expected performance for a couple of GB but then it drops massively.
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тАО08-03-2009 04:58 AM
тАО08-03-2009 04:58 AM
Re: Performance with FC Ultrium 4-SCSI LTO4 drive
60655+1 Datens├Г┬дtze ein
60655+1 Datens├Г┬дtze aus
15900360704 Bytes (16 GB) kopiert, 155,939 Sekunden, 102 MB/s
The 102 MB/s look good, but....
here are some statistics from my spool device during that test (the device is a RAID0 which can deliver data with ~160 MB/s).
--dsk/sdg--
_read _writ
[...]
104M 0
121M 0
102M 0
120M 0
103M 0
121M 0
102M 0
121M 0
103M 0
118M 0
106M 0
116M 0
108M 0
116M 0
108M 0
114M 0
110M 0
113M 0
112M 0
111M 0
113M 0
109M 0
115M 0
106M 0
118M 0
103M 0
120M 0
100M 0
119M 0
103M 0
113M 0
111M 0
98M 0
114M 0
108M 0
96M 0
108M 0
109M 0
103M 0
96M 0
96M 0
97M 0
101M 0
97M 0
97M 0
96M 0
92M 0
92M 0
so far so good, but then the speed drops to < 50 MB/s.
0 0
0 0
0 0
32M 0
64M 0
32M 0
62M 0
35M 0
64M 0
32M 0
64M 0
32M 0
64M 0
47M 0
49M 0
[...]
A second test directly started after the first one shows the whole problem...
$dd if=/spool/testdata of=/dev/ULTRIUM-TD4-D3 bs=256k
60655+1 Datens├Г┬дtze ein
60655+1 Datens├Г┬дtze aus
15900360704 Bytes (16 GB) kopiert, 261,715 Sekunden, 60,8 MB/s
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тАО08-03-2009 06:40 AM
тАО08-03-2009 06:40 AM
Re: Performance with FC Ultrium 4-SCSI LTO4 drive
Does it go into an NSR then out via SCSI to the drives, or is it direct fibre ?
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тАО08-03-2009 12:08 PM
тАО08-03-2009 12:08 PM
Re: Performance with FC Ultrium 4-SCSI LTO4 drive
The recommended action is to clean the drive several times if that is the case.
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тАО08-03-2009 10:56 PM
тАО08-03-2009 10:56 PM
Re: Performance with FC Ultrium 4-SCSI LTO4 drive
The cable is directly attached to the drive. No NSR involved.
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тАО08-04-2009 12:43 AM
тАО08-04-2009 12:43 AM
Re: Performance with FC Ultrium 4-SCSI LTO4 drive
It took me some time to generate the support ticket. Because we are running Debian Etch Linux I had to convert the ltt RPM into a Debian packet with alien.
Can you see anything interesting in the report? We had some bad Maxell tapes (seems that a whole shipment with the same manufacture date was bad). But this didn't affects the perfromance of the two SCSI drives.
How can I force cleaning of the drive? I always thought the drive would refuse cleaning if it's not needed.
This is the Lib's information regarding cleaning:
Cleaning Information
Cleaning Needed? NO
Cleaning Required NO
Cleaning is in progress NO
Clean Expired NO
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тАО08-04-2009 01:32 AM
тАО08-04-2009 01:32 AM
Re: Performance with FC Ultrium 4-SCSI LTO4 drive
Writing 16 GB from disk to tape again (/dev/sdg = /spool).
$dd if=/spool/testdata of=/dev/ULTRIUM-TD4-D3 bs=256k
60655+1 Datens├Г┬дtze ein
60655+1 Datens├Г┬дtze aus
15900360704 Bytes (16 GB) kopiert, 277,436 Sekunden, 57,3 MB/s
dstat output
--dsk/sdg--
_read _writ
1438k 28B
92M 0
118M 0
109M 0
115M 0
113M 0
112M 0
116M 0
108M 0
120M 0
105M 0
124M 0
104M 0
124M 0
104M 0
120M 0
107M 0
117M 0
112M 0
112M 0
115M 0
109M 0
117M 0
107M 0
121M 0
103M 0
121M 0
103M 0
118M 0
107M 0
109M 0
115M 0
96M 0
110M 0
111M 0
99M 0
96M 0
104M 0
106M 0
104M 0
99M 0
99M 0
96M 0
96M 0
96M 0
96M 0
32M 0
0 0
0 0
7552k 0
57M 0
36M 0
60M 0
63M 0
64M 0
56M 0
45M 0
58M 0
64M 0
61M 0
42M 0
58M 0
64M 0
64M 0
43M 0
53M 0
64M 0
64M 0
47M 0
49M 0
64M 0
64M 0
59M 0
37M 0
[......]
32M 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
0 0
34M 0
94M 0
96M 0
96M 0
96M 0
105M 0
107M 0
105M 0
100M 0
96M 0
103M 0
108M 0
106M 0
100M 0
96M 0
103M 0
108M 0
105M 0
101M 0
96M 0
103M 0
109M 0
104M 0
101M 0
96M 0
103M 0