8.0-RELEASE/amd64 - full ZFS install - low read and write disk performance

[Dan Naumov]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Alexander Motin <mav at freebsd.org> wrote:
> Artem Belevich wrote:
>> aoc-sat2-mv8 was somewhat slower compared to ICH9 or LSI1068
>> controllers when I tried it with 6 and 8 disks.
>> I think the problem is that MV8 only does 32K per transfer and that
>> does seem to matter when you have 8 drives hooked up to it. I don't
>> have hard numbers, but peak throughput of MV8 with 8-disk raidz2 was
>> noticeably lower than that of LSI1068 in the same configuration. Both
>> LSI1068 and MV2 were on the same PCI-X bus. It could be a driver
>> limitation. The driver for Marvel SATA controllers in NetBSD seems a
>> bit more advanced compared to what's in FreeBSD.
>
> I also wouldn't recommend to use Marvell 88SXx0xx controllers now. While
> potentially they are interesting, lack of documentation and numerous
> hardware bugs make existing FreeBSD driver very limited there.
>
>> I wish intel would make cheap multi-port PCIe SATA card based on their
>> AHCI controllers.
>
> Indeed. Intel on-board AHCI SATA controllers are fastest from all I have
> tested. Unluckily, they are not producing discrete versions. :(
>
> Now, if discrete solution is really needed, I would still recommend
> SiI3124, but with proper PCI-X 64bit/133MHz bus or built-in PCIe x8
> bridge. They are fast and have good new siis driver.
>
>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 3:29 AM, Pete French
>> <petefrench at ticketswitch.com> wrote:
>>>> I like to use pci-x with aoc-sat2-mv8 cards or pci-e cards....that way you
>>>> get a lot more bandwidth..
>>> I would goalong with that - I have precisely the same controller, with
>>> a pair of eSATA drives, running ZFS mirrored. But I get a nice 100
>>> meg/second out of them if I try. My controller is, however on PCI-X, not
>>> PCI. It's a shame PCI-X appears to have gone the way of the dinosaur :-(
>
> --
> Alexander Motin

Alexander, since you seem to be experienced in the area, what do you
think of these 2 for use in a FreeBSD8 ZFS NAS:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA.cfm?typ=H
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA.cfm?typ=H&IPMI=Y

- Sincerely,
Dan Naumov