[OpenIndiana-discuss] Dell R510 SAS2 Backplane with SAS2008 (PERC H200)

[Grant Albitz]

My reasoning behind the dual controller was simply that each controller has 1gb of nvram cache and I figured the more the better =), I received my 9240 today. It is a 6gbps card, yet it states it only supports sata 2 devices and not sata3. I am going to try it anyways (I have 12 sas drives + 2 256gb Samsung 830 ssds for read cache so I may take a performance hit on the ssds.). At this point I plan on trying all possible configurations. If you have a benchmark test you would like me to run against my setups please post and I can humor you with the results.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Lubel [mailto:alubel at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 6:35 PM
To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana
Cc: Discussion list for OpenIndiana
Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Dell R510 SAS2 Backplane with SAS2008 (PERC H200)

I would stick with single drive raid 0. I tried what you are talking about in the distant past and it didn't work out so well with manageability or performance. 

I know performance will be good, far better than wirespeed of a 1gbps for nearline type workloads. If you want some file bench results of my raidz I can put some together. 

Creating the raid0 doesn't lose any functionality that I am aware of. Using 2 controllers may make sense if you were pure ssd, I don't see how 12 disks could saturate a 6gbps multiport controller. 

On Jan 11, 2012, at 8:50, Grant Albitz <GAlbitz at Albitz.Biz> wrote:

> Also,
> 
> As far as the drives go I have the same problem with different drives so I have to question if its really the drives. I was actually wondering if there is some sas command the h200 simply doesnt recognize. I suppose its also possible that the entire dell line of the sudo 7200rpm sas drives are lacking some SAS functionality as well. The lsi 9240-8i should be here tomorrow, i will let you guys know my findings with that. Please let me know your thoughts regarding raid 1 vs a bunch of raid 0s on the controller.
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Grant Albitz [GAlbitz at Albitz.Biz]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 8:43 AM
> To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana
> Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Dell R510 SAS2 Backplane     with    SAS2008 (PERC H200)
> 
> i purchased an lsi controller card last night. if that does not work i have a h700 i can pull. I am curious about the following though:
> 
> once you create a raid 0 dont you lose some inherent functionality of zfs? if that is the case would it make more sense for me to do the following:
> 
> since my intent is to run the zfs equavilent of raid 10. could i just create a bunch of mirrors on a h700 and then use zfs to stripe them. i wouldnt expect too much of a penalty hit for the controller doing raid 1, and i would suspect a failed drive situation would be more straightforward and "normal"
> 
> also i have very little experience with sas expanders. i actually have 2 h700s available to me. would it make sense to install both h700s into the system and run a single channel from each card to the backplane? in my case i would make 6 total raid 1 pairs, 3 on each controller and then stripe them with zfs. this would give me the additional 1gb of cahce.
> 
> im just thinking out loud, i wasnt sure if you could connect 2 raid controllers to the dell backplane. i wasnt sure if the backplane was truly split for each channel or if somehow the controller saw all disks on both channels and was multipathing.
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Andy Lubel [alubel at gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 1:00 AM
> To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana
> Cc: openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org
> Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Dell R510 SAS2 Backplane with        SAS2008 (PERC H200)
> 
> Hat to go with h700. Works flawlessly. Had to make single drive raid 0 then create pool. I tried lsi and dell IT firmware to no avail so I assume it's the drives also since hooking any sata drive up did indeed work, just something about the sas drives (not really sas but they are called that).
> 
> H700 you will be happy with performance probably not so happy with drive replacement outage though.  No raidctl support and I hate MSM.
> 
> On Jan 10, 2012, at 23:38, cryptz <galbitz at albitz.biz> wrote:
> 
>> how did you make out with this? i have the same configuration but my 
>> system came with 2tb WD drives. Otherwise our configuration and 
>> symptoms were the same. Did the h700 resolve this? Woudl an LSI 8 
>> port I card be prefered so that we can skip the raid 0 setup?
>> 
>> 
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