FreeBSD 8.0-BETA4 IBM ServerRaid 8k issues

[Artis Caune]

2009/9/10 George Mamalakis <mamalos at eng.auth.gr>:
> Hello everybody,
>
> Yesterday I installed FreeBSD 8.0-BETA4 on an IBM 3650, having a ServerRaid
> 8k adapter, and 6 sata disks on raid-6.
> ....
> aac0: COMMAND 0xffffff80003e08a0 TIMEOUT AFTER 40 SECONDS
> aac0: COMMAND 0xffffff80003d5070 TIMEOUT AFTER 40 SECONDS
> aac0: COMMAND 0xffffff80003e0d00 TIMEOUT AFTER 40 SECONDS
> aac0: COMMAND 0xffffff80003d9440 TIMEOUT AFTER 40 SECONDS
> ....
>
> ...and kept on like that, for many many lines, with decreasing timeouts.
> Once the syncing process stopped, everything came back to normal (not that I
> have stress-tested the machine, to be honest...). But since it happened
> once, during this specific procedure, then maybe it could also happen when
> the raid controller is reconstructing its volumes; and this would be very
> annoying, as far as the server's efficiency (and/or maybe stability) is
> concerned.

Same problem here, thought we got timeouts also on idle boxes.

IBM support told to switch controller channel speed from auto(3Gbps)
to 1.5Gbps and update ServeRaid firmware. We are currently running
5.2.0-15429 (flashing them almost monthly :) ). You can change speed
in raid bios, in Ctrl-A menu.
But this issue is only with sata disks, sas works perfectly.




-- 
Artis Caune

    Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.