NetRAID-1Si on Netserver LC3

[Tim Hatu]

Throughput on the NetRAID-1Si with 3x9.1 GB SCSI 2 drives in RAID 5 configuration is extremely slow. We only get around 1MB/sec!when we copy files from a directory to another. We updated to the latest firmware, updated the NT drivers without success.
During the copy process disk activity is continuos but is very slow.
We don't know why the disk throughput is so slow.
We are running Window NT 4 SP6a

Any ideas would be appreciated ?

[Marcin Golembski_1]

Do you have the cache on the netraid enabled?

[Marco Hogeveen]

Check the transfer speed of your SCSI channel:
- Reboot the netserver
- Enter the netraid express tools during POST by pressing Ctrl-M
- Select Objects
- Select SCSI Channel
- Select Channel 0 (the only available channel on a 1si)
- On the bottom of the list check SCSI transfer= Ultra-2 (80MB/s). if it's Fast (20 MB/s) or Ultra (40 MB/s) you might want to change it to Ultra-2.
This doesn't affect your data. You have to verify that your harddisks are capable of running Ultra-2 speeds.
What's the HP productnumber of the disks?

Also check the properties of the logical drive(s):
- Object
- Logical drive
- Properties
What's the
- stripesize?
- Write policy?
- Read policy?
- Cache policy?

Good luck,

Marco.

[Tim Hatu]

Thanks Marco and Marcin,
The settings for logical drives are :
- stripesize - 8K
- Write policy - Write Through (not recommened to use Write Back with NetRAID-1Si
- Read policy - Adaptive
- Cache policy - Cached

Regarding the HD Product Numbers:
Drive 1: HP 9.10 GB A 80-3807 SCSI-2
Drive 2: HP 9.10 GB A 80-SA4C SCSI-2
Drive 3: HP 9.10 GB A 80-LYK8 SCSI-2

The original FW on the NetRAID was F.01.03 and BIOS B.01.04 which described the Adapter as an i960. When we updated the FW to the latest (F.02.05 and BIOS B.02.03), the Adapter reported was NetRAID-1Si and also a new option appeared under the Adapter option that was Emulation. It was set to I2O although the default (according to the documentation) should be Mass Storage. We tried both emulation modes without any noticable difference. (In both cases we where using the latest NetRAID driver that comes with the LC3 NT 4 drivers (M.03.00). Could the I2O emulation cause this ? Or are we looking in the wrong direction ?

Thanks again

[Marco Hogeveen]

Tim,

The cache settings and stripesize look OK.
These disks are Ultra SCSI, so you can check to see if the speed of your SCSI channel is Ultra SCSI.
The emulation type does not affect the performance, you only change it when using operating systems like Novell Netware.

Let me know what the SCSI channel speed is.

Marco.

[Tim Hatu]

Marco,

The setting was originally Ultra 2 but with the new Firmware when we set to Ultra 2 in the Express Tools after booting NetRaid Assistant reports Ultra. It is currently set to Ultra but the performance is the same

Thanks

[Marco Hogeveen]

OK,

It looks like the netraid configuration is OK then.
How do you measure the performance?
Are you copying from one logical drive to the other? or from another source? (like commontray disk, network share).
In which PCI slot is the netraid 1si located?
What IRQ's are being used?

Marco.

[Marcin Golembski_1]

To add to Marco's: it is recommended in LC3 to put netraid card in slot 5 and the network card in slot 6.

Marcin

[Tim Hatu]

It takes around 15 minutes to copy a 1G file from a one location to another, be it on the same partition or another on the same logical drive.

I'll check the actual location of the cards

Thanks

[Tim Hatu]

To update you on the situation,

I've gone through all the possiblities that I can think of to figure out why the throughput is slow but without success. Here is a summary of what I've done:
- The NetRAID card is in SLOT 5, moved it to 6 without any difference.
- I've initialised the RAID 5 Pack again and re-installed the OS. Throughput remains under 2 MB/s
- I've changed the settings like Write Through to Write Back, Cached to Direct but the difference was not huge. The best throughput I got on a 410 MB file was around 3.2 MB/s
- I've then decided to just have 1 disk in the array and re-initialise as RAID 0 and re-installed the OS. Throughput remained around the 3 MB/s mark
The performance monitor of the NetRAID Assistant display a KB/s of around 100. It very rarely jumps to 300 and sometimes drops to 70!.
I've reset the BIOS of the LC3 with no effect
I've ran the Diagnostics on the Navigator CD with no error reported
I can't think of anything else to troublehsoot this strange problem.
With these kind of drives (9.1GB SCSI-2) what kind of throughput should I expect ?

Thanks

[Theo Hill_1]

What kind of throughput are you looking for? How fast?

[Tim Hatu]

Theo,

I am asking for what I should be expecting from such drives in such a machine ? Is around 3 MB/s normal ?
With Ultra SCSI drives and controller the expectation would be around 12 MB/s.