lsi 9260-8i MegaRaid Card, Crap performance on a good card?

[androbourne]

So...

I'm running a supermicro server, in two raid 5s. One for OS and one for Data\VMs. The board is a X8DA3. http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DA3.cfm

I was using the Intel ICH10R SATA 3.0Gbps on board raid controller. However that model was old back in 2008 and has very bad performance rating. I ran a CrystalDisk report on it before I swapped it out with the new one. I was getting around 600mb/s read and 400mb/s write. Using the two Raid5 with 3x 7200 rpm drives in each Raid5.

I found this LSI Mega Raid 9260-8i and researched the card before buying it. Apparently it is a decent card. Has double the on board cache then the Intel ICH10R had and also included a BBU so I can enable write back caching for increased performance. Also able to perform at 6.0GB speeds for SataIII. This card performance wise, is way better then this old ICH10R on board raid controller, by far.

I installed the new LSI 9260, recreated the arrays exactly the same way as they were with the old controller and reinstalled fresh copy of Windows Server 2012 std then restored my data files to the data partition etc... everything is working fine.

I allowed the array to fully complete building etc.... and began drive tests again with Crystal Disk.

I'm getting complete crap results. 149mb/s on the read and 101.1mb/s on the write...

I followed this document https://www.supermicro.com/CaseStudies/6Gbs_LSI_b.pdf

Which suggested the raid/ caching settings. Made the changes and tested again. Same results. I even turned on no write buffering on the drives. No change again.

I went as far as updating the disk drivers and LSI Raid Controller firmware to the newest versions, I still get the same results...

The weird thing is not only do I get the same results, but making those changes SHOULD provide some change in results. Either negative or positive, but it doesn't. Every run is identical...

I can tell the changes are taking place as I'm using 3 different programs to monitor the Raid and the changes reflect each software properly.

I've googled around and see tons of people having performance issues with LSI but also tons of videos about it actually working pretty decently. (even Linus from TechTips did a video on this exact card and got pretty good performance).

I don't expect to get SSD like speeds, however I do expect a better card to get better performance then the on board raid controller...

Any ideas?

 

[androbourne]

Verified. Pulled out all the drives and checked the serials. They all match.

Resitted every drive and ensured the breakout cables sitted firmly on backplane.

Rechecked disk speeds... now 3 of the 4 are reporting 1.5 speeds...

 

[androbourne]

I ruled out breakout cable. I took the one we know is good from SAS port one on the raid controller and swapped it out with one on SAS port number 2. If the cable was bad the first array drives should have downclocked to 1.5 They did not.

 

[androbourne]

Mfg... you wont believe it.

I took out the drive to start doing exented diags on it because I was completely out of ideas. Saw this at the very bottom of the drive.



WHO USES JUMPER ANYMORE! I think didn't think to check because it was a new drive and no one ever uses jumpers anymore... of course the jumper was in place. Removed the jumper and now getting full 3.0ghz.

I have to rebuild the drive I removed from the array but I'll post speed tests once its done rebuilding.

 

[bibolorean]

Any updates here? I'm interested in your findings

 

[androbourne]

Well.

Removing the jumpers on the drive changed it to show 3.0gbps however that didn't change anything in relationship to speed tests.

I moved from a Raid 5 to a Raid 10. I should be seeing 4x read speeds and 2x write speeds.

http://www.raid-calculator.com/default.aspx
4 drives with 500gb each. I've used this calculator in a few of my client raid builds, it's general but pretty accurate.

I'm getting about half that in my read speeds with BBU enabled and still getting the same write speeds I was getting on a Raid 5...

I even contacted the seller of my Raid card. He was nice enough to second me a spare he had for testing. I used the replacement card and tested. Received the same results. I've tried 3 different BBUs, same results.

I know since I'm not using enterprise drives and only using 7200 rpm. I may not be reaching peak levels of the raid. But I should be getting some type of boost in performance in the write side, which I'm not. I'm OK with the read speeds. I believe this is the best I can get with my drives and PCI 2.0 limitations. I'm ok with that.

Write speeds are way off for a Raid10 though. Even without BBU enabled I should be seeing an increase from going from Raid5 to Raid10 and I dont even see the slightest increase.

I'm starting to think there is either an issue with the disk speed test tool, or I have some other system bottleneck I just can't find, but even with PCI 2.0 and 7200 RPM drive limitation. I should be seeing better write speeds on a Raid10.

 

[boe]

I just got a 9460 - first time I've ever had an issue with an LSI card. I've been using them for years. My old 9260 was at least 7 times as fast. I don't know what the issue is - tried a number of cache/read/write changes - new firmware, new driver, moved pcie slots and no improvement. I have another PC that is very similar and it has an adaptec controller and it is also 7x as fast. Even creating the array took a full 24 hours - this thing acts like a PC that should have an i7 and has an atom processor. My temp is 125F on the card - has a fan blowing directly on it.

 

[androbourne]

I just got a 9460 - first time I've ever had an issue with an LSI card. I've been using them for years. My old 9260 was at least 7 times as fast. I don't know what the issue is - tried a number of cache/read/write changes - new firmware, new driver, moved pcie slots and no improvement. I have another PC that is very similar and it has an adaptec controller and it is also 7x as fast. Even creating the array took a full 24 hours - this thing acts like a PC that should have an i7 and has an atom processor. My temp is 125F on the card - has a fan blowing directly on it.

Sounds like a firmware bug maybe. Hopefully gets resolved soon. I never found a solution to my problem. I'm going to go with an HP or Intel based raid card instead.

 

[jltjernagel]

I'm running the Lenovo RAID 930-8i (9460-8i), RAID 5, 4 5,900 rpm drives, 6 gb/s. I'm very happy with the controller and the performance. Here are my settings and benchmarks.

Read Policy - No Read Ahead
Write Policy - Always Write Back
IO Policy - Cached IO

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Read Policy - Always Read Ahead
Write Policy - Always Write Back
IO Policy - Cached IO

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[androbourne]

And I'm on Raid 10 with 7200 RPM drives... I should be getting better scores then you by almost double, and I'm not even getting half of what you have...

I've tried two different cards same make/model, swapped out BBU's etc... and still have the same issue. I think I might swap out my 7200rpm drives for SAS 15k ones if my backplane can support SAS. If that doesn't fix it I'm going with another Raid card.

I dont understand why I'd be getting such low scores.... if you compare scores, its basically half, kinda feels like caching is not working even through it is on in the settings...