sanity check: is 9211-8i, on 8.3, with IT firmware still "the one"

Fri Jan 20 14:22:20 UTC 2012

On Fri, 2012-01-20 at 09:50 +0100, Peter Maloney wrote:
> John,
> 
> Various people have problems with mps and ZFS.
> 
> I am using 8-STABLE from October 2011, and on the 9211-8i HBA, I am
> using 9 IT firmware. In my case, it was the firmware on an SSD that
> caused problems.
> Crucial M4-CT256M4SSD2 firmware 0001
> Randomly it would fail. Trying to reproduce with heavy IO didn't work.
> But I found that hot pulling works. Hot pulling the disk a few times
> while mounted causes the disk to never respond again until rebooting.
> (causing SCSI timeouts). When running "gpart recover da##" or
> "camcontrol reset ..." on the disk after it is removed, the kernel
> panics. The mpslsi driver does not solve the problem with the
> CT256M4SSD2 and firmware 0001, but firmware 0009 seems to work. Trying
> the 'lost disk' on another machine works. But FreeBSD needs to be
> rebooted, maybe for some part of the hardware to reset and forget about
> the disk.
> 
> Sebulon with Samsung Spinpoint disks, here is a similar problem in this
> thread:
>     http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=27128
> And Beeblebrox, with different Samsung Spinpoint disks:
>     http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=162201#post162201
> 
> And Jason Wolfe, with Seagate ST91000640SS disks (with mps):
>     http://osdir.com/ml/freebsd-scsi/2011-11/msg00006.html (freebsd-fs
> list, with original post at 11/01/2011 07:13 PM CET)
> But with mpslsi, the problems go away he says. I tried reproducing his
> problem on my system (on my M4-CT256M4SSD2 0001 and my HDS5C3030ALA630),
> and was able to get a timeout similar to his with mpslsi (one time out
> of many tries), and it recovered gracefully, as he says his does. So
> based on that, I would say mpslsi is the safest choice. Perhaps the same
> problem on mps will cause a crash on any system with any disk, not just
> ST91000640SS disks.
> 
> I am using the following disks with no known problems:
>     Hitachi HUA723030ALA640 firmware MKAOA580 (tested with mps and
> mpslsi, didn't test hot pull)
>     Seagate ST33000650NS firmware 0002 (tested with mps and mpslsi,
> didn't test hot pull)
>     Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 firmware MEAOA580 (tested mostly with
> mpslsi, and tested hot pull)
>     Crucial M4-CT256M4SSD2 firmware 0009 (tested only with mpslsi; not
> fully tested yet, but passes the hot pull test; has a URE which it
> didn't have with firmware 0001)
> 

I am having a problem with Seagate ST1000DL002 disks but I haven't yet
determined weather it is the disks themselves (they -- two of them, new
-- fail under a MB controller too.


> 
> The "hot pull test":
> --------------
> dd if=/dev/random of=/somewhere/on/the/disk bs=128k
> pull disk
> wait 1 second
> put disk back in
> wait 1 second
> pull disk
> wait 1 second
> put disk back in
> wait 1 second
> hit ctrl+c on the dd command
> wait for messages to stop on tty1 / syslog.
> gpart show
> zpool status
> zpool online <pool> <disk>
> zpool status
> 
> If gpart show does not seg fault, and zpool online causes the disk to
> resilver, then it is all good.
> 
> (40% of the time, the bad SSD passes the test if only pulled once, and
> so far 0% if pulled twice, and one time out of all tests, the red lights
> blink on all disks on the controller when the bad disk is pulled)
> --------------
> 
> 
> So, I would say that with the right combination of hardware, you have a
> fine system. So just test your disk however you think works best. If you
> want to use mps, use the "smartctl -a" loop test to make sure it handles
> it. If during the test you get no timeouts, I would call the test
> indeterminate. A pass looks like what Jason Wolfe posted in the mailing
> list (linked above) "SMID ... finished recovery after aborting TaskMID ...".
> 
> 
> Peter
> 
> 
> On 01/20/2012 01:08 AM, John Kozubik wrote:
> >
> > We're about to invest heavily in a new ZFS infrastructure, and our
> > plans are to:
> >
> >
> > - wait for 8.3, with the updated 6gbps mps driver
> >
> > - Install and use LSI 9211-8i cards with newest "IT" firmware
> >
> >
> > This appears to be the de facto standard for ZFS HBAs ...
> >
> > Is there any reason to consider other cards/vendors ?
> >
> > Are these indeed considered solid (provided I use the new mps in 8.3) ?
> >
> > Thanks.
> > _______________________________________________
> > freebsd-fs at freebsd.org mailing list
> > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-fs
> > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-fs-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> Peter Maloney
> Brockmann Consult
> Max-Planck-Str. 2
> 21502 Geesthacht
> Germany
> Tel: +49 4152 889 300
> Fax: +49 4152 889 333
> E-mail: peter.maloney at brockmann-consult.de
> Internet: http://www.brockmann-consult.de
> --------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-fs at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-fs
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-fs-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"