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тАО05-17-2010 05:14 AM
тАО05-17-2010 05:14 AM
How to know if BBWC is enabled
I've been working with some HP Servers (ML and DL) for a while, but I've never gone much deep on hardware details or related stuff.
Sometime ago I experienced very bad write performance issues with an e200i controller on a RAID 5 setup, but I left the problem unsolved once I guessed it wouldn't be a serious problem on that specific case, and I wasn't willing to buy more hardware.
Anyway, now I decided to go throught that matter, in order to choose a correct hardware setup so that I can have fault tolerance and (relatively) good performance without having an actual dedicated Storage.
All right, after some reading I have figured out that the whole thing about write performance on HP servers controllers depends on the write cache. So, I became aware of the BBWC, and the need of a battery module to have such cache. (No, I didn't have a cache battery at that time, so I suppose that was the origin of my problem.)
Ok, now I have a brand new DL180 on my hands, which came to me with BBWC (let's call) "hardware requisites" (cache memory and battery modules) already installed on it. So, I discovered that HP CLU CLI tool and installed it.
What I want to know is: how can I know wheter BBWC is actualy enabled on the controller or not? There's no explicit reference of it on controller details.
Would that be called "Array Accelerator"? I guess that "Drive Write Cache" reffers to disk internal caches, not the BBWC, am I right? Is that BBWC enabled automatically when you upgrade your controller with battery and memory modules?
And a last question: Would be that a good choice for fault tolerance, a minimun of scability and reliability, without having a much big drawback on performance, on what regards storage?
Can you help me to understand those things?
Thank you very much.
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тАО05-17-2010 06:40 AM
тАО05-17-2010 06:40 AM
Re: How to know if BBWC is enabled
Drive Write cache refers to the drive internal cache, that should stay disabled when you use the drives on a raid controller.
The smart array controllers offer a good disk based fault tolerance. Any of the raid1/10/5 are good redundant raid types. You should leave disk to be used as hot spare and monitor the controller status for any events.
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тАО05-17-2010 06:59 AM
тАО05-17-2010 06:59 AM
Re: How to know if BBWC is enabled
RE your choice for fault tolerance:
Every selection has a tradeoff. Raid 5 has poorer write performance, but better read performance. Raid 1 has better write performance, but poorer write performance. If you can afford the extra disks raid 1+0 (10), with 4 or more drives, would be the the best option for performance.
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тАО05-17-2010 07:12 AM
тАО05-17-2010 07:12 AM
Re: How to know if BBWC is enabled
I'll come soon to report what I've got and discuss a little more about that matter with you.
Thank you for the answers, for now.
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тАО05-17-2010 10:19 PM
тАО05-17-2010 10:19 PM
Re: How to know if BBWC is enabled
See the attached manual.
BBWC enabler can be a problem.
Regards.
Erdogan.
No support by private messages. Please ask the forum!
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тАО05-24-2010 03:12 AM
тАО05-24-2010 03:12 AM
Re: How to know if BBWC is enabled
Sometime ago I deployed a ML 350 G5 as a file server, with 4 SATAII disks set, arranged in a RAID5 volume. The controller was an E200i with 128MB of cache, and BBWC enabled at 50%/50%, as I understand now and you can see below:
Smart Array E200i in Slot 0 (Embedded)
Bus Interface: PCI
Slot: 0
Serial Number: QT8CMP7964
Cache Serial Number: P9A3A0B9SX01VT
RAID 6 (ADG) Status: Disabled
Controller Status: OK
Chassis Slot:
Hardware Revision: Rev A
Firmware Version: 1.82
Rebuild Priority: Medium
Expand Priority: Medium
Surface Scan Delay: 15 secs
Post Prompt Timeout: 0 secs
Cache Board Present: True
Cache Status: OK
Accelerator Ratio: 50% Read / 50% Write
Drive Write Cache: Disabled
Total Cache Size: 128 MB
No-Battery Write Cache: Disabled
Cache Backup Power Source: Batteries
Battery/Capacitor Count: 1
Battery/Capacitor Status: OK
SATA NCQ Supported: False
By that time, I performed some disk performance tests with IOZone, and the results I got were not as I expected (I mean worse). I tried all chunk sizes for RAID, from 8k to 256k, but the rates stayed around the same values for all of them. I followed RAID/LVM/Partition/EXT3 alignment recomendations too. You can see an example of my results here[1].
As you can see, for files a little large (bigger than 100MB), write rates goes from 50 to 30 MB/s, basiclly. I thought it very bad.
Should I expect the same rates for a P410/P410i (or P212) with at least 256MB of cache and BBWC enabled, or can I be more optmistic about it?
[1] http://pastebin.com/20vGpRxD