Extreme Slow Replication on HP Hardware

[Manfred]

Hello,

Hardware: 2 x HP DL 380 G5, 2 GB RAM, SMART 6i RAID Controller with 64 MB RAM (no Battery buffered Write Cache) 4 x 146 GB SAS 10K (Raid 5)

iSCSI/NAS Performance as expected - but Replication Performance very slow (400 -700 KB).
(iSCSI/NAS - same results).

System is configured as Lab - so there ist no workload on it.

Same effekt with HP ML 370 G5 (two P400 RAID Controller) and HP ML 320s (one P400i RAID
Controller). iSCSI Performance with VMWare good (up to 80 MB/Sec) but poor Replication
Performance.

In both cases Network Performance ist between 90 - 95 MB/Sec via Gigabit Ethernet (tested with Tool from OPEN-E)

General Problems with HP SMART Raid Controller and OPEN-E Replication?

Thx!

[zeki893]

HP is junk in my opinion. I've used the DL160 G5, DL360 G5, DL380 G5, and MSA70. They have very very poor performance.
Go search the hp forums and you'll see people have the same slow performance and they say its normal.

The RAID card that comes with the DL160 is useless. I couldn't get it to work. Just ended up pulling them out and used the on-board sata port.

The DL360 G5 Raid controller crashes any time we put a high load on it.

The DL380 G5 w/P800 controller was connected to the MSA70 and I would get a bad drive every other week. Did I mention it's slow?

I've gone with the areca 1280ML and am very happy with it.

Isn't 80MBps low for a RAID5 4xSAS?

[Manfred]

Thx a lot for your Answer. But I am not sure about the meaning of your Message.
Probably my bad English.

1. Whats wrong with 90-95 MB/Sec Tranfer Speed over one Gigabit Connection?
I think 125 MB/Sec is the highest possible Speed. Right?

2. I wrote that iSCSI work as expected - only Replication Speed is not acceptable.
Network Speed (see 1.) can not be the Reason for that.

3. May be that HP is not the first Choise for OPEN-E - but should I throw away my
HP Hardware???

So, where are the helpful hints?

[webguyz]

I assume you have Jumbo Frames turned on at all 3 locations, switch and both dss's or just the dss's if your doing a crossover cable. If using a switch, try using a crossover cable directly between the dss's to eliminate that being an issue.

[Manfred]

No, I am not using Jumbo Frames. In my Lab Environment there ist only one HP 2810
Switch with 2 VLAN's (one for Mgmt and iSCSI and the other one for Replication).

OPEN-E Network Test Tool shows 90-94 MB/Sec Speed on the Replication Interface.
Astonishingly Replication on the same Interface works like a ISDN Connection.

Testing with Crosslink Cable is a good Idea. I will do this an report the Results.

[webguyz]

After you do the crossover cable try it without Jumbo Frames first and then enable JF on both DSS's and try it again. There must be a reason every generic reference to ISCI SANS talks about enabling Jumbo Frames.

[Al-S]

Try to use the latest build available now, as with each new build there is new and updated drivers.
New builds can be found at:
http://www.open-e.com/account/products-and-updates/

[Manfred]

hi,

it seems that the missing battery buffered cache has caused the performance problems
with the replication.

we have installed several open-e SAN's base on HP Hardware (most DL 360/380 G5/G6/G7 - sometimes with additional MSA 60/70) with replication in the last 12 month. either iSCSI oder FC - no problems with the replication performance (ca. 80 -90 MB/Sec).