Re: RAID Controller (HP P400) beat by SW-RAID?

Mark,

On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 10:10 PM, mark <dvlhntr(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

>
>
> >From: pgsql-performance-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
> [mailto:pgsql-performance-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of Anthony
> Presley
> >Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 4:45 PM
> >To: pgsql-performance(at)postgresql(dot)org
> >Subject: [PERFORM] RAID Controller (HP P400) beat by SW-RAID?
>
> >We've currently got PG 8.4.4 running on a whitebox hardware set up, with
> (2) 5410 Xeon's, and 16GB of RAM. It's also got (4) 7200RPM SATA drives,
> using the onboard IDE controller and ext3.
>
> >A few weeks back, we purchased two refurb'd HP DL360's G5's, and were
> hoping to set them up with PG 9.0.2, running replicated. These machines
> have (2) 5410 Xeon's, 36GB of RAM, (6) 10k SAS drives, and are using the HP
> SA P400i with 512MB of BBWC. PG is running on an ext4 (noatime) partition,
> and they drives configured as RAID 1+0 (seems with this controller, I
> cannot
> do JBOD). I've spent a few hours going back and forth benchmarking the new
> systems, and have set up the DWC, and the accelerator cache using hpacucli.
> I've tried accelerator caches of 25/75, 50/50, and 75/25.
> >
>
>
> I would start of by recommending a more current version of 9.0...like 9.0.4
> since you are building a new box. The rumor mill says 9.0.5 and 9.1.0 might
> be out soon (days?). but that is just rumor mill. Don't bank on it.
>

Looks like 9.1 was released today - I may upgrade to that for our testing.
I was just using whatever is in the repo.

> What kernel are you on ?
>

2.6.18-238.19.1.el5

> Long time HP user here, for better and worse... so here are a few other
> little things I recommend.
>

Thanks!

> Check the bios power management. Make sure it is set where you want it.
> (IIRC the G5s have this, I know G6s and G7s do). This can help with nasty
> latency problems if the box has been idle for a while then needs to start
> doing work.
>

I've checked those, they look ok.

> The p400i is not a great card, compared to more modern one, but you should
> be able to beat the old setup with what you have. Faster clocked cpu's more
> spindles, faster RPM spindles.
>

I've upgraded the CPU's to be X5470 today, to see if that helps with the
speed of

> Assuming the battery is working, with XFS or ext4 you can use nobarrier
> mount option and you should see some improvement.
>

I've been using:
noatime,data=writeback,defaults

I will try:
noatime,data=writeback,barrier=0,defaults

> Make sure the raid card's firmware is current. I can't stress this enough.
> HP fixed a nasty bug with Raid 1+0 a few months ago where you could eat
> your
> data... They also seem to be fixing a lot of other bugs along the way as
> well. So do yourself a big favor and make sure that firmware is current. It
> might just head off headache down the road.
>

I downloaded the latest firmware DVD on Thursday and ran that - everything
is up to date.

> Also make sure you have a 8.10.? (IIRC the version number right) or better
> version of hpacucli... there have been some fixes to that utility as well.
> IIRC most of the fixes in this have been around recognizing newere cards
> (812s and 410s) but some interface bugs have been fixed as well. You may
> need new packages for HP health. (I don't recall the official name, but new
> versions if hpacucli might not play well with old versions of hp health.
>

I got that as well - thanks!

> Its HP so they have a new version about every month for firmware and their
> cli utility... that’s HP for us.
>
> Anyways that is my fast input.
>
> Best of luck,

Thanks!

--
Anthony Presley