Dell/Perc5 raid/MPT SAS Integrated Raid Write Performance

[Filip Palian]

Hi folks,

I've also encountered problems with write performnce on PE860, below are
some details.


DELL PE860
==========

product:
========
chipset LSI SAS 1068B0
LSI SAS 1068-IR 06.50.00
mptbios 6.06.00.02 (2006.04.05)

disks:
======
2x ST3160812AS in RAID1

dmesg:
======
Copyright (c) 1992-2007 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #4: Wed May 30 10:34:00 CEST 2007
    root at ghostface1.expro.dmz:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GF-sn
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           X3210  @ 2.13GHz (2133.42-MHz
K8-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x6f7  Stepping = 7

Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0xe3bd<SSE3,RSVD2,MON,DS_CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,<b9>,CX16,<b14>,<b15>>
  AMD Features=0x20100800<SYSCALL,NX,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>
  Cores per package: 4
real memory  = 4831838208 (4608 MB)
avail memory = 4130754560 (3939 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <DELL   PE_SC3  >
...
mpt0: <LSILogic SAS/SATA Adapter> port 0xec00-0xecff mem
0xfe9fc000-0xfe9fffff,0xfe9e0000-0xfe9effff irq 16 at device 8.0 on pci2
mpt0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
mpt0: MPI Version=1.5.12.0
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x16
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x16 (ACK not required).
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x12
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x12 (ACK not required).
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x12
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x12 (ACK not required).
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x16
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x16 (ACK not required).
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0xb
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0xb (ACK not required).
da0 at mpt0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0

blogbench:
==========
Frequency = 10 secs
Scratch dir = [/var/tmp/]
Spawning 3 writers...
Spawning 1 rewriters...
Spawning 5 commenters...
Spawning 100 readers...
Benchmarking for 30 iterations.
The test will run during 5 minutes.
...

Final score for writes:            17
Final score for reads :          2026



Currently I'm during upgrading firmware and applaying upgrades from
Dell, if this will help I let you know.

Regards,
Filip Palian