RX300 S5

PRIMERGY, PRIMEPower

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kcwiklak
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 9:45
Product(s): Fujitsu RX300 S5

RX300 S5

Postby kcwiklak » Mon Dec 17, 2012 11:36

This is my first post here so I would like to pass greeting to everybody.

I have a problem with machine
Fujitsu RX300 S5, 16GB RAM, Windows Server 2008, RAID 6 ( 5 disks 146 gigs ).
Role: Domain Controller, db server ( mssql 2008 ), only 20 users in AD

When I sow this machine for the 1st time I have impression that it`s performance is very poor.
I installed Raid Manager and it shows me that Backup Battery Unit is dead. So I bought a new one and installed it being full of hope that without BBU ( caching stuff ) this machine could work slow.
Yesterday I replace the BBU, and as you can guess nothing has changed.
I attached a screen shot from HD TACH. HD TUNE shows similar results.
pon_17122012_0840.jpg
HD TACH test
pon_17122012_0840.jpg (74.78 KiB) Viewed 19766 times


RAID Manager does not show anything, just warning ( couple of days ago )

Id 10909
Adapter FTS RAID 5/6 SAS based on LSI MegaRAID (0): Unexpected sense: Disk (3), CDB:28 00 0E 4C 1D 2F 00 00 51 00, Sense:(recovered error, recovered data without ECC - data auto reallocated)F0 00 01 0E 4C 1D 2F 28 00 00 00 00 17 06 00 80 00 0B 00 28 52 01 01 01 00 6B 00 01 8B FB 01 04 00 00 00 20 1D 40 00 0F C0 C0 FF 7F FF FF FF FF


do you have any clue what to do next? what to check?

Davie
Posts: 567
Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2005 0:01
Product(s): PRIMERGY, ServerView
Location: UK

Re: RX300 S5

Postby Davie » Mon Dec 17, 2012 11:39

Now you have a RAID BBU, have you changed the write cache mode on the RAID6 from write-through to write-back?

kcwiklak
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 9:45
Product(s): Fujitsu RX300 S5

Re: RX300 S5

Postby kcwiklak » Mon Dec 17, 2012 11:49

Davie thanks for your fast reply.
below is the screen shot from RaidManager and options you`ve mentioned
raidManager.png
raidManager.png (25.14 KiB) Viewed 19761 times


default write mode (write-back, write-through, always write-back)

does rest three options correct?

can I just switch to write-back in Raid Manager, without rebooting stuff etc....???

I didn`t change anything else but the BBU ( I Had BBU but after 3 years it was dead )

Davie
Posts: 567
Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2005 0:01
Product(s): PRIMERGY, ServerView
Location: UK

Re: RX300 S5

Postby Davie » Mon Dec 17, 2012 17:29

As long as the new BBU is working correctly, you should just be able to change write mode to "write back"

kcwiklak
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 9:45
Product(s): Fujitsu RX300 S5

Re: RX300 S5

Postby kcwiklak » Mon Dec 17, 2012 17:42

Ok, I'll let know about the results.
Should I also change the read mode option to "read ahead"?

Davie
Posts: 567
Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2005 0:01
Product(s): PRIMERGY, ServerView
Location: UK

Re: RX300 S5

Postby Davie » Tue Dec 18, 2012 8:12

No - leave the read mode unchanged.

Read ahead doesn't work well on a server where read requests tend to be fairly random

kcwiklak
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 9:45
Product(s): Fujitsu RX300 S5

Re: RX300 S5

Postby kcwiklak » Tue Dec 18, 2012 8:48

Unfortunatelly, after changing to "write-back" no much has changed. I`ve run three test after switch to "write-back" through HD TACH

avg read = 48 MB/s
random access = 33 ms
CPU utilization = 0%

During the night a run an error test through HD TUNE

scanForErrorResult.png
scanForErrorResult.png (134.77 KiB) Viewed 19744 times


it shows no error but the speed map

speedMapHD_TUNE.png
speedMapHD_TUNE.png (548.2 KiB) Viewed 19744 times

me@work
Posts: 1024
Joined: Thu Jun 22, 2006 15:32
Product(s): Scaleo Pi2662, Primergy

Re: RX300 S5

Postby me@work » Tue Dec 18, 2012 18:47

There are a few things that need to be considered here, I'm afraid:

- First, of course, changing the Write Mode for the logical drive should not show any effect for a READ test. If it did, I'd be very astonished (OK, in the past there existed controllers that increased the size of their read cache when the write cache size got decreased, but that's a different story...)
- Then, the faulty BBU would only affect write operations, as read operations would still benefit from the still operable cache. Or should I write: They would, if you hadn't disabled EVERYTHING that could have positive effect.

You might want to have a look at Fujitsu's White Paper on RAID controller performance. They're discussing RAID5 instead of RAID6, but, well, Christmas is still a few days away...

If you wish to optimize your system for your test (and not for its initial purpose of acting as a server system), then I'd suggest you should enable read-ahead, and perhaps the disks' cache as well.

The initially mentioned "unexpected sense" for disk (3) is an error that occurred during a read operation as well. It was recovered, but did this error show up only once, or do you get messages like this quite often, especially when your test runs?

If your system is still under warranty, you might want to get in contact with Fujitsu's support team, in order to get the RAID Manager logs checked. There may be a disk getting weak or two.

You did install latest versions of BIOS, firmware, driver for the RAID controller, or didn't you?

And finally:
As you already noticed, it's not a good idea to perform a lengthy time-consuming test on a Windows server system over night. These systems tend to spend their "free" time optimizing themselves, and I'd bet that during the period with the red "slow" boxes, this server was performing database reorganisation or backup or whatever else...
If you wish to get correct values (well,sort of...), you need to remove any possible OS (or application) duty from the disk (or disks) being checked during the test runtime, besides the test application's duties, of course.

kcwiklak
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2012 9:45
Product(s): Fujitsu RX300 S5

Re: RX300 S5

Postby kcwiklak » Wed Dec 19, 2012 9:39

me@work - thanks for your considerations

Changing to "Write-back" was my little hope :)

Yes, before installing new BBU I installed new software - firmware, etc...

The "unexpected sense" for disk (3), since November 28 I can see 28 of such a warnings at different time intervals ( not when my tests run ).
Most of them are from December ( log in Raid Manager is from 28 of November ) You probably have right that speed map in hd tune shows red block probably during database tasks, jobs.

The machine is not under warranty anymore since September. At the moment I`m waiting for the answer from Fujitsu Germany.


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