possible issues with Dell/Perc5 raid

[Tom Judge]

Randy Schultz wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> We just purchased a Dell 860 with these specifics:
>   - dual core pentium 915, 2.8 GHz, 800MHz FSB
>   - 2x512 MB 533 MHz DDR2 RAM
>   - Dell's SAS/SATA drive controller(which is actually an LSILogic)
>   - their 5IR PCI-Express internal RAID controller
>   - a pair of 250 GB SATA II's set up RAID 1
> 
> After installing 6.2-RELEASE on the system I noticed, while pulling the 
> ports
> collection off the CDROM, that the speed to the drives started out just 
> fine
> but long before the ports collection was installed the transfer rate was 
> down
> to ~35kB/s.  Huh.  So I started paying closer attention.  I installed a 
> couple
> of ports and every time there was anything but miniscule data being
> transferred to/from disk the transfer rate bottomed out.  I installed the
> blogbench port and it confirmed the I/O as tremendously sluggish.  I've
> attached the output of the blogbench runs.  The first is from an old 700 
> MHz
> pc, Acer M25C mobo, with 1 IDE drive just for comparison.  The second 
> data set
> is the new Dell.  I've also attached the output of dmesg.  Everything looks
> fine except for the mpt lines.  Would those be telling of something 
> amiss or
> are they innocuous barks?
> 
> I understand that RAID 1 is not the fastest but I certainly expected it 
> to be
> faster than it is, esp. with hw RAID.  Are my expectations too high and 
> this
> is normal?
> 
> -- 
<SNIP>
 From the boot messages you have included below it seems that you have a 
Dell SAS-5i (Internal PCIe) controller and not a Perc/5[ie].

The SAS-5 known to have very poor performance (1Mb/s 100%busy) under 
certain loads (cvsup).

I have CC'd the author of the mpt driver (Matthew Jacob) as he may be 
able to shed more light on the problem and time frame to resolution.

Tom

> 
> 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-STABLE #0: Mon May  7 20:16:35 EDT 2007
>     root at maxu.earlham.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/maxu.070507
> Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
> CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz (2800.11-MHz 686-class CPU)
>   Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0xf64  Stepping = 4
>   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=0xe49d<SSE3,RSVD2,MON,DS_CPL,EST,CNTX-ID,CX16,<b14>,<b15>>
>   AMD Features=0x20100000<NX,LM>
>   AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>
>   Cores per package: 2
> real memory  = 1073479680 (1023 MB)
> avail memory = 1041326080 (993 MB)
> ACPI APIC Table: <DELL   PE_SC3  >
> FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs
>  cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID:  0
>  cpu1 (AP): APIC ID:  1
<SNIP>
> mpt0: <LSILogic SAS/SATA Adapter> port 0xec00-0xecff mem 0xfeafc000-0xfeafffff,0xfeae0000-0xf
> eaeffff irq 16 at device 8.0 on pci2
> mpt0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
> mpt0: MPI Version=1.5.13.0
> 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).
<SNIP>
> da0 at mpt0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
> da0: <Dell VIRTUAL DISK 1028> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device 
> da0: 300.000MB/s transfers, Tagged Queueing Enabled
> da0: 237464MB (486326272 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 30272C)