mfi driver performance

[Andrey Zonov]

On 9/10/12 9:14 PM, matt wrote:
> On 09/10/12 05:38, Achim Patzner wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> We’re testing a new Intel S2600GL-based server with their recommended RAID adapter ("Intel(R) Integrated RAID Module RMS25CB080”) which is identified as
>>
>> mfi0: <ThunderBolt> port 0x2000-0x20ff mem 0xd0c60000-0xd0c63fff,0xd0c00000-0xd0c3ffff irq 34 at device 0.0 on pci5
>> mfi0: Using MSI
>> mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 4.23 
>> mfi0: MaxCmd = 3f0 MaxSgl = 46 state = b75003f0 
>>
>> or
>>
>> mfi0 at pci0:5:0:0:        class=0x010400 card=0x35138086 chip=0x005b1000 rev=0x03 hdr=0x00
>>     vendor     = 'LSI Logic / Symbios Logic'
>>     device     = 'MegaRAID SAS 2208 [Thunderbolt]'
>>     class      = mass storage
>>     subclass   = RAID
>>
>> and seems to be doing quite well.
>>
>> As long as it isn’t used…
>>
>> When the system is getting a bit more IO load it is getting close to unusable as soon as there are a few writes (independent of configuration, it is even sucking  as a glorified S-ATA controller). Equipping it with an older (unsupported) controller like an SRCSASRB
>> (mfi0 at pci0:10:0:0:       class=0x010400 card=0x100a8086 chip=0x00601000 rev=0x04 hdr=0x00
>>     vendor     = 'LSI Logic / Symbios Logic'
>>     device     = 'MegaRAID SAS 1078'
>>     class      = mass storage
>>     subclass   = RAID) solves the problem but won’t make Intel’s support happy.
>>
>> Has anybody similar experiences with the mfi driver? Any good ideas besides running an unsupported configuration?
>>
>>
>> Achim
>>
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> I just set up an IBM m1015 (aka LSI 9240lite aka Drake Skinny) with mfi.
> Performance was excellent for mfisyspd volumes, as I compared using the
> same hardware but with firmware (2108it.bin) that attaches under mps.
> Bonnie++ results on random disks were very close if not identical
> between mfi and mps. ZFS performance was also identical between a
> mfisysd JBOD volume and a mps "da" raw volume. It was also quite clear
> mfisyspd volumes are true sector-for-sector pass through devices.
> 
> However, I could not get smartctl to see an mfisyspd volume (it claimed
> there was no such file...?) and so I flashed the controller back to mps
> for now. A shame, because I really like the mfi driver better, and
> mfiutil worked great (even to flash firmware updates).
> 

Have you got /dev/pass* when the controller run under mfi driver?  If
so, try to run smartctl on them.  If not, add 'device mfip' in your
kernel config file.

-- 
Andrey Zonov

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