System perforamance 4.x vs. 5.x and 6.x

[Bruce Walker]

Quoting Brett Bump <bbump at rsts.org>:
> 
> The mail server started life
> on a PowerEdge 1550 1U with intel nics, but was rapidly running out of
> storage.  We had a backup 1750 for the content management system so put
> 4.10 on it and then just copied the users (about 8k of them) and their
> files across.

Brett, possibly quick test for you: install a different disk controller in the the 1750 -- any controller at 
all that isn't based on the LSI Logic 1030 or 1020 chipset.  Eg: any Adaptec will do.

In my experience the LSI 1020 and 1030 chipsets using the mpt driver are complete junk.  Very bad 
performance. This drove me crazy  with Sun v20z and v40z servers until we installed a different 
controller and bypassed the on-board controller.  It also made it impossible to use Sun x4100 boxes as 
there's no way to upgrade from the onboard SCSI controller.

I've seen checkins to the mpt driver in the last year so this may finally have been fixed in 6.3 (and 7.0, 
etc.).

Cheers!

-bmw