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Quango
Asked: 2009-08-12 01:51:35 +0800 CST

HP SmartArray 410i controller slow?

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Have just had a new HP DL380 G6 server set up.

This has a SmartArray P410i controller and seven 2.5" 146Gb SAS 10k RPM disks, configured as three RAID1 arrays and a floating hot spare.

Problem: I did a disk performance test on the drives using DiskMark and got a really LOW performance figure: 167MB/sec read, 74MB/sec write.

Compare this with a two-year old Dell PERC5i (our current server) - this has a RAID1 array of two 66Gb SAS 10K drives - DiskMark rates this at 706MB/sec read and 622MB/sec write.

I've searched for drivers and bios on HP site not found any (except for drive spec changes).. Firmware on controller reports 1.62 and Windows x64 driver is version 6.14.0.64

Any suggestions? or is the HP SmartArray controller a dog with fleas?

raid hp hp-proliant hp-smart-array controller

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I know that G6 box very well and certainly the read performance looks fine, they are after all just two disks R1's so 167MBps seems ok as that drive does about 90Mbps max each in real use. The write speed is a little low I have to say, how's the cache split?

    Oh and there's no way in hell any two spinning disks will give you a real 706/622 - maybe it's just hitting the cache? You'd struggle to get a pair of SSDs to that level.

    And no, smartarrays are wonderful things - I think you've just got your dell speeds wrong and perhaps the write performance might need a bit of tweaking - try Brent's sqlio guide and come back to us/me (CLICKY)

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  2. Did you check to see if the cache is enabled?

    I seem to recall that without a battery you have to manually enable it (had a similar issue once).

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