RE: Performance issues with Areca 1680 SAS Controllers

["Nick Cheng" <nick.cheng@areca.com.tw>]

It could improve the performance with F/W v1.47.

-----Original Message-----
From: Pasi Kärkkäinen [mailto:pasik@iki.fi] 
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 8:16 PM
To: Nick Cheng
Cc: 'Andrew Morton'; 'Michael Fuckner'; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org;
linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Performance issues with Areca 1680 SAS Controllers

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 12:56:04PM +0300, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 09:54:27AM +0800, Nick Cheng wrote:
> > Hi Gentlemen,
> > We have worked it out with new firmware and driver.
> > You can download the latest F/W from
> > ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/BIOS_Firmware/ARC1680/ and use the
attached
> > driver.
> > Please have a try.
> > Any comments are welcome.
> 
> Thanks! I'll give it a try today and report back.
> 

v1.47 firmware seems to fix this problem! The system behaves _much_ better
now even when Areca is busy flushing it's cache! 

I didn't update the driver, only Areca firmware.

Is there something imported fixed in the latest driver? I'm using the
default driver included in RHEL/CentOS 5.3.

# modinfo arcmsr.ko
filename:       arcmsr.ko
version:        Driver Version 1.20.00.15.RH1 2008/02/27

-- Pasi

> 
> > Thank you,
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Pasi Kärkkäinen [mailto:pasik@iki.fi] 
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:09 PM
> > To: Nick Cheng
> > Cc: 'Andrew Morton'; 'Michael Fuckner'; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org;
> > linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org; 'Erich Chen'
> > Subject: Re: Performance issues with Areca 1680 SAS Controllers
> > 
> > On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 03:39:40PM +0800, Nick Cheng wrote:
> > > Hi Michael,
> > > I will get around handling your issue.
> > > Thanks for your kindly patience,
> > > 
> > 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > Was this issue resolved? I'm seeing similar behaviour.. I think it's
related
> > to flushing the controller cache?
> > 
> > Waiting a while (after the disk leds stop blinking) performance is back
to
> > normal.. 
> > 
> > -- Pasi
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Andrew Morton [mailto:akpm@linux-foundation.org] 
> > > Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 9:18 AM
> > > To: Michael Fuckner
> > > Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org; Nick
Cheng;
> > > Erich Chen
> > > Subject: Re: Performance issues with Areca 1680 SAS Controllers
> > > 
> > > (cc's added)
> > > 
> > > On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:16:56 +0100
> > > Michael Fuckner <michael@fuckner.net> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > I am using an Areca 1680-SAS-Controller with 16 SAS-HDD (Seagate 1TB
> > > > ST31000640SS). I set up a Raid6 with all 16 disks and formatted it
with
> > > > XFS. The Controller has 512MB RAM and a BBU. The OS is installed to
> > > > another disk attached to the onboard AHCI controller.
> > > > 
> > > > After doing some IO, the areca raidset is slower compared to the
rate 
> > > > directly
> > > > after boot.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > [root@storage ~]# dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=50k
> > > iflag=direct
> > > > 51200+0 records in
> > > > 51200+0 records out
> > > > 53687091200 bytes (54 GB) copied, 59.6494 seconds, 900 MB/s
> > > > [root@storage ~]# mount /dev/sdb1 /data
> > > > [root@storage ~]# cd /data/
> > > > [root@storage data]# ./iozone -i 0 -i 1 -s 32g -r 16m -S 6144 -t 8
-+r
> > > > -o  >raid6_sync_t8.log
> > > > [root@storage data]# cd
> > > > [root@storage ~]# umount /data/
> > > > [root@storage ~]# dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=50k
> > > iflag=direct
> > > > 51200+0 records in
> > > > 51200+0 records out
> > > > 53687091200 bytes (54 GB) copied, 76.4036 seconds, 703 MB/s
> > > > 
> > > > I tested different Versions of Linux (Centos 5.2, OpenSUSE 11,
Debian
> > > > Lenny) and Vanilla kernels 2.6.22-2.6.27, all show this behaviour.
> > > > 
> > > > Idea why the device slows down after IO- or better: how to keep the
high
> > > > rate? Is this reproducible foer Areca SATA Controllers (Type 11XX
and
> > > 12XX)
> > > > 
> > > > Regards,
> > > >    Michael!
> > > 
> > > --
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> 
> 
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