Promise SX6000 is a POS.

Promise SX6000 is a POS.

[Jason C. Leach]

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Linux-Raid:

I have a Promise SX6000 RAID card and on it an 1Tb RAID-5 array (6*200G 
WD2000 ATA disks 7500rmp).  I am using Debian Woody with the 2.4.19 
Kernel on a AMD AthelonXP +2500 system. I am using the Promise driver 
downloaded and compiled from there website.

I am getting about 3.3Meg/sec from the array to an EIDE disk (segate 
barracuda ATA). While from the Array to the Array I get about  
4.1Meg/sec; copying 200G is an overnight plus job for sure. To me this 
is stupid slow, and I must be doing something wrong. Even if the Promise 
card is the slowest one available (3Ware, Promise, Adaptek) it can't 
really be *this* slow: this card should not even be on the market at 
this speed.  All the while my system load average is about 1.5-2.  Is 
this Linux? Does it really run this slow under Windows as well? Should I 
be using i2o or some other driver? Perhaps the array is just too large?

PS: I get no errors, and the card is on it's own interrupt with a full 
128MB cache.

Thanks,
Jason.


-- 
Jason C. Leach
IT Manager
J.S. Thrower & Associates Ltd.
Phone: (250) 314-0875 Fax (250) 314-0871
email: jason.leach@jsthrower.com
http://www.jsthrower.com


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RE: Promise SX6000 is a POS.

[Petriz, Pablo]

We have a similar configuration (SX6000) and for the same purpose, store GIS
files: shape files, tifs and jpg (not databases), it's like an image file
repository. 

And we have seen an even lower perfomance than you.

I'll tell you an overview of our configuration, and for the fine tuning
numbers (perf tests, fs conf, blocks, stripes, all the raid stuff) please
wait till next week (my sysadmin is on vacation).

MAIN SERVER
Intel Xeon 2.4Ghz on a SE7501BR2 motherboard with 1GB RAM and a Seagate 40GB
IDE for the RedHat Linux 8 Kernel 2.4.18-14 attached to a Promise SX8000
tower with 8 Maxtor MaxLineII 300GB 5400RPM (6 on RAID5, 2 hotspare)

BACKUP SERVER
Intel Xeon 2.4Ghz on a SE7501BR2 motherboard with 1GB RAM and a Seagate 40GB
IDE for the RedHat Linux 9 Kernel 2.4.20-8 plus a Promise SX6000 with 5
internal Maxtor MaxLineII 300GB 5400RPM (all on RAID5 on 1 EXT3 FS)

The fact is that the main server isn't working yet (that's another story...)
but we have the backup server working. We are looking for storage capacity
over performance, that makes the decision between 300GB 5400RPM over 250GB
7200RPM... but what about the SX6000 performance? We expect a little
better...

We are really newbies in RAID stuff, and our goal was to design a reliable
near 2TB storage + bkup with a uSs15.000 budget and here, in Argentina where
it's not easy to get specific products and support.

That's an overview of our situation, and i'm really interested in share our
experience to help others and to make this work the best we can. So, as i
said, wait till next week for the specific information.

Thanks,


PABLO



> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: Jason C. Leach [mailto:Jason.Leach@jsthrower.com]
> Enviado el: viernes 2 de abril de 2004 02:53
> Para: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org
> Asunto: Promise SX6000 is a POS.
> 
> 
> Linux-Raid:
> 
> I have a Promise SX6000 RAID card and on it an 1Tb RAID-5 
> array (6*200G 
> WD2000 ATA disks 7500rmp).  I am using Debian Woody with the 2.4.19 
> Kernel on a AMD AthelonXP +2500 system. I am using the Promise driver 
> downloaded and compiled from there website.
> 
> I am getting about 3.3Meg/sec from the array to an EIDE disk (segate 
> barracuda ATA). While from the Array to the Array I get about  
> 4.1Meg/sec; copying 200G is an overnight plus job for sure. 
> To me this 
> is stupid slow, and I must be doing something wrong. Even if 
> the Promise 
> card is the slowest one available (3Ware, Promise, Adaptek) it can't 
> really be *this* slow: this card should not even be on the market at 
> this speed.  All the while my system load average is about 1.5-2.  Is 
> this Linux? Does it really run this slow under Windows as 
> well? Should I 
> be using i2o or some other driver? Perhaps the array is just 
> too large?
> 
> PS: I get no errors, and the card is on it's own interrupt 
> with a full 
> 128MB cache.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jason.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jason C. Leach
> IT Manager
> J.S. Thrower & Associates Ltd.
> Phone: (250) 314-0875 Fax (250) 314-0871
> email: jason.leach@jsthrower.com
> http://www.jsthrower.com
> 
> 

Re: Promise SX6000 is a POS.

[Jason C. Leach]

Petriz, Pablo wrote:

>We have a similar configuration (SX6000) and for the same purpose, store GIS
>files: shape files, tifs and jpg (not databases), it's like an image file
>repository. 
>  
>
> <snip>

I have a Promise SX6000 w/ 6 WD2000 EIDE drives and 128MB cache. I 
flashed the BIOS to the latest and am using Debian Woody with Linux 
kernel v2.4.25.  I use the Promise SCSI drive from the website, it 
compiles with out any problems. I think I got i2o working, but since 
this driver worked just find I went with it. The system hardware is an 
AMD AthlonXP 2500+ w/ 512M RAM.  I have 1 RAID5 array with 5 of the 
disks (800G) (reiserfs) and 1 hot spare.  So far so good.  I would have 
liked to not have a hot spare, but am too paranoid the office will not 
call me if a disk fails.  On a side note, you will hear the SX6000 start 
beeping if a drive has problems.  If the drive has not completley 
calved, the card will atempt to rebuild the drive. You can use the 
system during this time if you don't mind the beeping.  If the disk 
rebulds, the beeping will stop and life is good. If the drive fails to 
rebuld you MUST replace it (the beeping will continue).  I have had a 
rebuid occure once due to a power falure. The array rebuld just fine, I 
think it takes about 8-12h at 800G-1Tb storage.

I installed sysstat or more specificaly iostat and tested the system 
moving a 1G file of random data. I tried going to and from the RAID 
array and a copy on the array.  In general I got 30MB/sec reading and 
11MB/sec writing.  I then phoned Promise and asked what I should expect 
and they said I was on the mark.  They also commented the SX6000 is not 
really a performance oriented card: I am glad they were honest.

We will probably use the array for storage. People will move the GIS 
data to some 75G SCSI drives to do batch processing or other work.  I am 
also going to put a fast large SATA or EIDE disk in as a hog disk, where 
I can spool/buffer backups before they hit the SCSI tapes.

My only real complaint with the card is the high load averages that I 
get when working the array. I would say if I copy 120G from EIDE to the 
array my load average is 1.5-1.7 for the duration of the copy (3 hours 
at 11M/sec). This is if the system is doing nothing else. I know this is 
not all the arrays fault, after all I am using the an IDE channel. But I 
do get a high load everage when doing a copy/move on the array.   Some 
times the load average can be higher. But the system seems fairly resposive.

I just read a message from somone with a 3Ware card who complaind of 
similar concerns.  Speaking of which, I phoned the people at 3Ware to 
ask what I would get with an Escilade card and they were not much 
better.  Probably about 40M/sec they said but would not be as specific 
as Promise.

I find reiserfs works well on the array. I have another RAID5 array that 
does not have the hot-spare drive (to be replaced with the 2nd one I am 
working on) that has not lost a byte of data.   When I created the array 
I used the 64K stripe block size.  I suppose I could go smaller, and 
perhaps save some space but I have very few small files. Most are 1MB or 
more.  The people at Promise were not optimistic that I would get any 
better performance with a different block size: given the i/o stats I am 
getting.  In retrospect I might have gone with a 32K stripe block size, 
or at least tested it.  But at 12h to initialize the array, I did not 
have an extra day.

All in all I do find you get what you pay for.  I bet an SATA 3Ware card 
would be much better, but I don't really want to swap out perfectly good 
drives. I may as well get a few more fast SCSI or SATA disk for people 
to do work on. Speaking of drives, I find the WD2000 drives run quite 
HOT.  I'm probably going to add some more ventilation. If you drop the 
temperature of your drives by only a few degrees you stand to 
significantly increase their life expectancy.

J.

Re: Promise SX6000 is a POS.

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Jason C. Leach wrote:

> I have a Promise SX6000 w/ 6 WD2000 EIDE drives and 128MB cache. I 

I have lost an JBOD array on this card when power to some of the drives in
the array was accidentally not reconnected after hardware maintenance and
the system booted. I spent 1-2 hours trying to get it working again, no
luck. Linux support is not very good, Promise doesnt provide updated
drivers for later kernels. Promise doesnt seem to want to support this
card at all on Linux(they answered some inital email and I received an
beta driver that worked well, which I then had to distribute to others
here on this list because Promise stopped answering email about it
themselves).

I prefer 3ware every single second of the day, have several 7500 8- and
12- channel cards and they have been working flawlessly. The SX6000 was 
taken out and put in a Windows machine instead.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se