MSA1500 Firmware v4.94 - oke to install?

[Bart Vanden Driessche]

I was waiting for firmware v4.94 for the MSA1500.

We now have some performance issues with MSA20 (SATA), these are very slow (3 times slower) compared to the MSA30 (SCSI). And I was hoping the new firmware would solve these problems.

At a certain moment it was available at the hp site, but now it seems gone. I have the v4.94 firmware downloaded from hp, but now I am worried. Is it save to install this version? Is the v4.94 revoked? Is there a new firmware on the way?

[DragomirAtea]

Hi Bart!

I've used the v4.94 in lab, as far as I know it works just fine. But you should call your support to verify as allways...

DZ

[Greg Carlson]

Bart,

It is currently only available from support. You'll need to call in and request for the MSA1500 and MSA 20 fw. The fw fix is to address issues with losing connection with the MSA20 however.

The FW will not fix the performance difference between SATA and SCSI drives however.. thats the difference between SATA and SCSI for performance.

Here is a white paper describing the differences between the two technologies for you.
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/sata-vs-sas.pdf

Ciao,
Greg

[Bart Vanden Driessche]

Are there any figures available of the optimal (maximum) performance of SATA disks? Same thing for SCSI disks?

We are using MSA30 and MSA20. But finding the performance of MSA20 very low. We have around 10MB/s (12 disks of 250GB in RAID5) on the SATA side, and 30MB/s (14 disks of 146GB in RAID5) on the SCSI side.

Are these numbers normal? Is there an optimal config? Like: you should use 2 scsi controllers and 2 msa30 cabinets (instead of 1)...

Thank you for helping me out.

[Fabian_Nowee]

There were some serious stability issues with the msa1500 when having a very heavy write load. (nov 2004 firmware release)

we received this version a while ago, the problems are pretty much resolved, not completely.

If you do changes, while heavy writing, the msa still does weird things, like failovers.

btw, This version is also a lot faster than the old one.

[Fabian_Nowee]

Summary of changes included in 4.94 & 1.26:

MSA1500 cs 4.94FW

- Due to parts availability, future controllers will have alternate memory components that are functionally identical to existing components but will require firmware version 4.94. Redundant controllers require matching firmware versions, therefore an upgrade to 4.94 is required.
- Improves Performance seen over prior FW
- Intermittent critical lockups during heavy I/O on the same dual channel SCSI I/O module
- Improves interaction with MSA20

MSA20 1.26FW

- Fixed an issue that could cause the MSA20 to become inaccessible during heavy I/O operations to the MSA1500.
- Fixed an issue where a power cycle to the MSA20 could cause it to become inaccessible upon the next command from a Smart Array 6x controller.
- Fixed an issue causing the MSA20 to incorrectly report some SATA drive error conditions.

[Bart Vanden Driessche]

thank you for the replies, I will test the new firmware according to the procedures of HP Support.

[Bart Vanden Driessche]

I think the feedback was clear enough. There are a bunch of new things with this firmware. Enough to test it.