7.0-Release and 3ware 9550SXU w/BBU - horrible write performance

[Lamont Lucas]

alan bryan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've got a new server with a 3ware 9550SXU with the
> Battery.  I am using FreeBSD 7.0-Release (tried both
> 4BSD and ULE) using AMD64 and the 3ware performance
> for writes is just plain horrible.  Something is
> obviously wrong but I'm not sure what.

Hello Alan.

Have you ever used this card with any other OS?  I have about 6 of them 
running under linux and I too get horrible write performance from them.  
After several days of tuning and research, I've concluded that the cards 
are just stinkers reguardless of what OS they are running.   That seems 
to be the consensus if you google 3ware write performance.  I've put 
them in 64 and 32 bit slots, various speeds and with various drives.

I had an older 3ware card running under FreeBSD 6.2 that would give 
decent read performance in a raid0 configuration but terrible write 
performance.  I performed no tuning on that setup, as my application was 
mostly read and it was "good enough" for the time.

Not terribly helpful, I admit, but I wanted you to at least think about 
it being the card rather than the OS.