I have two systems with a serious I/O subsystem based on Areca PCIe
cards, but the results I am getting from simple write benchmarks are
extremely slow.
The details are two 64-bit Opteron systems, one with an Areca PCIe
1210 and the other a PCIe 1220 and both with Seagate SATA II 750 GB
drives. The motherboard is a Tyan S2891 (Thunder K8SRE). The 120
system has 1 GB of PC2700 RAM and the 1220 system has 2GB of PC3200
RAM. The Areca BIOS on both cards is version 1.17a and the firmware
is 1.41.
I have tried two different kernels, 2.6.17 from Ubuntu, which had the
Areca driver added by Ubuntu and 2.6.18 from Gentoo with the Areca
driver added manually from 2.6.19-rc3.
In the initial tests, both computers had a RAID 5/6 configuration,
but to confirm the result, I setup a single Seagate as a pass-through
drive and had the same results. The drive was set to SATA II with NCQ
and the cache was enabled to write-back.
dd if=/dev/zero of=output oflag=sync bs=100M count=1 gives an
excellent result, around 188 MB/sec.
dd if=/dev/zero of=output oflag=sync bs=200M count=1 gives an
excellent result, around 167 MB/sec.
dd if=/dev/zero of=output oflag=sync bs=300M count=1 gives an OK
result, around 117 MB/sec.
dd if=/dev/zero of=output oflag=sync bs=400M count=1 gives a very
poor result, around 35 MB/sec.
These very low numbers around 30 MB/sec persist as I increase the bs number.
As I continue to run the tests, the bs that gives a poor results goes
down to about 200 MB. The results are from the system with the 1220
card. The system with 1210 gives slightly lower numbers overall.
I have also confirmed these low numbers using a benchmark called dm
from the network RAID package, drbd.
Reading from the drives (based on hdparm -tT testing) gives excellent results.
When I use the drive directly connected to the SATA on the
motherboard, all the write tests hover around 56 MB/second regardless
of bs value.
Since both systems are affected, my guess is there is bug in the
Areca driver or with the cards themselves.
--
Maurice Volaski, [email protected]
Computing Support, Rose F. Kennedy Center
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
Dear Maurice Volaski,
Please update Areca Firmware version into 1.42.
Areca's firmware team found some problems on high capacity transfer.
Hope the weird phenomenon should disappear.
Areca had some experiences from its subsystem producers about vibration.
The vibration issue can lower your transfer rate.
The vibration factor always comes from system's power supply and cooling
fans.
In Areca Lab. will research if there were any compatibility issue with these
type disks of you used.
Best Regards
Erich Chen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Maurice Volaski" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2006 4:35 AM
Subject: Pathetic write performance from Areca PCIe cards
>I have two systems with a serious I/O subsystem based on Areca PCIe cards,
>but the results I am getting from simple write benchmarks are extremely
>slow.
>
> The details are two 64-bit Opteron systems, one with an Areca PCIe 1210
> and the other a PCIe 1220 and both with Seagate SATA II 750 GB drives. The
> motherboard is a Tyan S2891 (Thunder K8SRE). The 120 system has 1 GB of
> PC2700 RAM and the 1220 system has 2GB of PC3200 RAM. The Areca BIOS on
> both cards is version 1.17a and the firmware is 1.41.
> I have tried two different kernels, 2.6.17 from Ubuntu, which had the
> Areca driver added by Ubuntu and 2.6.18 from Gentoo with the Areca driver
> added manually from 2.6.19-rc3.
>
> In the initial tests, both computers had a RAID 5/6 configuration, but to
> confirm the result, I setup a single Seagate as a pass-through drive and
> had the same results. The drive was set to SATA II with NCQ and the cache
> was enabled to write-back.
>
> dd if=/dev/zero of=output oflag=sync bs=100M count=1 gives an excellent
> result, around 188 MB/sec.
> dd if=/dev/zero of=output oflag=sync bs=200M count=1 gives an excellent
> result, around 167 MB/sec.
> dd if=/dev/zero of=output oflag=sync bs=300M count=1 gives an OK result,
> around 117 MB/sec.
> dd if=/dev/zero of=output oflag=sync bs=400M count=1 gives a very poor
> result, around 35 MB/sec.
> These very low numbers around 30 MB/sec persist as I increase the bs
> number.
>
> As I continue to run the tests, the bs that gives a poor results goes down
> to about 200 MB. The results are from the system with the 1220 card. The
> system with 1210 gives slightly lower numbers overall.
>
> I have also confirmed these low numbers using a benchmark called dm from
> the network RAID package, drbd.
>
> Reading from the drives (based on hdparm -tT testing) gives excellent
> results.
>
> When I use the drive directly connected to the SATA on the motherboard,
> all the write tests hover around 56 MB/second regardless of bs value.
>
> Since both systems are affected, my guess is there is bug in the Areca
> driver or with the cards themselves.
> --
>
> Maurice Volaski, [email protected]
> Computing Support, Rose F. Kennedy Center
> Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 11:34:23AM +0800, erich wrote:
> Dear Maurice Volaski,
>
> Please update Areca Firmware version into 1.42.
> Areca's firmware team found some problems on high capacity transfer.
> Hope the weird phenomenon should disappear.
Erich, is there anyone at Areca that you can pass on the message to
+--------------------------------------------+
| Please update your ftp server/website when |
| there is a new firmware or driver release! |
+--------------------------------------------+
that would be great. I followed the links from http://www.areca.us to the
firmware at:
ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/BIOS_Firmware/ARC1130/
for our cards, but the 1210 and 1220 that Maurice was speaking about
suffer from the same problem - there is no mention of a 1.42 firmware
anywhere, just the 1.41 that's been out for ages.
...
And speaking of 1.41, there appear to have been two releases on two
different dates both called 1.41, as well as two different versions
of the driver that both call themselves version 1.41 despite the
second one fixing a major bug we suffered from.
Please also avoid that behaviour and label each new version of
the driver with a new number if you're using version numbers.
Numbers are cheap, but identifying if a machine is running the patches
it needs to not crash every few weeks under the loads we run them at
is not (well, not until it crashes anyway!)
Thanks for listening, and hopefully thanks in advance for making your
drivers and firmware easier to find and identify in future.
Regards,
Bron.
Dear Sir,
This is Kevin Wang from Areca Technology, Tech-Support Team.
as you recommend, we will updated driver/firmware to our ftp/website once it
released.
the firmware V1.42 sent by erich is a beta version and not released yet, it
is certifying still.
so you can not find it in our ftp site or website now.
and could you please inform me more detail about the two releases V1.41 ?
as i remember, the V1.41 should released once only, a second V1.41 could be
a bug fixed version and a bug fixed version should not public for customer
download. please inform me more detail about it, i will ask ftp releated
person check it.
sorry for the inconvenience.
Best Regards,
Kevin Wang
Areca Technology Tech-support Division
Tel : 886-2-87974060 Ext. 223
Fax : 886-2-87975970
Http://www.areca.com.tw
Ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bron Gondwana" <[email protected]>
To: "erich" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Maurice Volaski" <[email protected]>; "廣安科技 蘇莉åµ"
<[email protected]>; "廣安科技 ç¾…ä»»å‰" <[email protected]>;
"廣安科技 王家仲" <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>;
<[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 9:05 PM
Subject: Re: Pathetic write performance from Areca PCIe cards
> On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 11:34:23AM +0800, erich wrote:
> > Dear Maurice Volaski,
> >
> > Please update Areca Firmware version into 1.42.
> > Areca's firmware team found some problems on high capacity transfer.
> > Hope the weird phenomenon should disappear.
>
> Erich, is there anyone at Areca that you can pass on the message to
>
> +--------------------------------------------+
> | Please update your ftp server/website when |
> | there is a new firmware or driver release! |
> +--------------------------------------------+
>
> that would be great. I followed the links from http://www.areca.us to the
> firmware at:
>
> ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/BIOS_Firmware/ARC1130/
>
> for our cards, but the 1210 and 1220 that Maurice was speaking about
> suffer from the same problem - there is no mention of a 1.42 firmware
> anywhere, just the 1.41 that's been out for ages.
>
> ...
>
>
> And speaking of 1.41, there appear to have been two releases on two
> different dates both called 1.41, as well as two different versions
> of the driver that both call themselves version 1.41 despite the
> second one fixing a major bug we suffered from.
>
> Please also avoid that behaviour and label each new version of
> the driver with a new number if you're using version numbers.
>
> Numbers are cheap, but identifying if a machine is running the patches
> it needs to not crash every few weeks under the loads we run them at
> is not (well, not until it crashes anyway!)
>
>
> Thanks for listening, and hopefully thanks in advance for making your
> drivers and firmware easier to find and identify in future.
>
> Regards,
>
> Bron.