[long] HELP! HP ML 350 G5 storage server _very_slow_ performances

[Venilton Junior]

Matteo,

If do you think that your program could cause this freezing. Run it with nohup and check the output of it.

And check if you have all the firmwares up to date in this machine.

Regards

[Matteo Emanuele]

I exclude the software causing the hangs, the entire _clean_ system is slower than expected and things get worse and worse using it like a common pc...
I've applied all the latest patches. The only solution so far is to add memory to the controller but I would have known it in advance...
Thanks anyway!

[PussPower]

I have ML350G5 with E200i 128BBWC (not storage-regular server), and some sort of other HP servers (2xML150G3). All of them demonstrate to me extremely low disk write performance. HP thinks, that is a good idea to disable INTERNAL drive's cache on controller level. Windows caching methods is blocked partially too on driver level.
I don't know how about Linux, but with W2K3 using newest ACU and latest firmware 1.66 for E200i there is a way to enable Internal drive cache on SAS. I speaking with HP representatives in my location - they don't understand that exist BIG problem with HP disk systems. If you want to use SATA drives your problems became bigger, because there is no way to enable internal drive cache on SATA. Wigh P400 controller things looks better - drive's cache can be enabled on SAS and SATA. But at this moment i don't have P400. I'm allready try to ask HP about E200 and SATA.

Hey HP !!!!!!!!!!!!!, make the NEW firmware and ACU for E200 that can enable INTERNAL drive's cashe !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't make me think that E200 is obsolete product. You ship them with the brand new servers, such as ML350G5 !!!!!!!!!!!!!! HP masters, your idea about blocking drive cache is IDIOTIC !!!!! No one uses the servers without UPSs. And I don't need reliability without performance.

[Adamantios Diamantidis]

I had similar performance issues with a Smart Array P400 on a Debian GNU/Linux (2.6.24) system and a four disk RAID5 array. Upgrading the controller's firmware to the latest version (currently 4.06) solved my problems. Now it's writing at a rate of about 500Mbps. I hope it improves even more after it's done with the parity initialization. My controller has 256MB of cache and no battery pack.

Good luck,
Adamantios