SOLVED Dell T620 server issues copying files

[Neil Jacobs]

Let me start by saying I know enough about linux to spell it. I have setup several freenas servers for various things including vmware, recording capture servers etc. I have a unique problem however with my home setup for my media.

I have 3 storage servers:
dell r610, 6-1tb sas 7.2k drives in a raid 5 - os runs on sony 8gb usb key - NAS1
dell r610, 6-1tb sas 7.2k drives in a raid 5- os runs on sony 8gb usb key - NAS2
dell t620, 5-2tb sas 7.2k drives in a raid 5 - os runs on sandisk 8gb usb key - NAS3

My user interface, (desktop source) is a 2012 server box running Plex on a VMware host.


I have installed freenas 9.3 on all 3 server and done the following:

1. Added the volume on each server.
2. changed the permissions allow write access for all.
3. Created a CIFS share and allowed guest access for each.
4. Map each NAS to the 2012 server.

I was in the process of doing some redesign of my setup and required moving data around and redoing hardware for better use of resources.

I setup NAS1 and copied 1.7TB of data over. Sustained 85mb+ dataspeed over the network.
I setup NAS2 and copied 2.4TB of data over. Sustained 85mb+ dataspeed over the network.

I setup NAS3 and started to copy data from NAS1 to NAS3, dtat starts to go and within 90 secs- 120 secs the data transfer rate starts to drop and falls all the way to zero. I get prompted with a interrupt action (error 0x8007003B) and have to try again or skip. Once these data transfer issues happen any action related to the NAS3 mapped drive acts unresponsive with typical windows fashion.

NAS1 and NAS2 work flawless in any scenario i can throw at them. NAS3 fails at every scenario. The only difference is its built on a diff set of hardware. and the USB key is a diff brand.

ANY suggestions? I have been banging my head for a day and no resolve.

Thanks for listening to my insanity

 

[Neil Jacobs]

After hours of trial and error. the Dell R610's perc cards work well with freenas even if you use them as a hardware level raid controller and setup your raid 5 at that level. The T620 perc card however fails horribly . disabling the HW level raid and converting everything to non-raid disk and letting freenas setup the raidz it all works with the same performance as the HW raid on the 610's. How this might help drive home the DONT use HW raid stories

 

[HoneyBadger]

What PERC cards are in each of those Dells?

The H200 and H310s can be flashed to the LSI 9211-8i equivalence and will then work perfectly with ZFS natively.

The "PERC S110" is a fakeRAID and can be disabled in BIOS to revert the ports to pure AHCI.

The PERC H700/H710 should not be used with FreeNAS, for reasons you've now discovered. ;)

 

[Neil Jacobs]

610s CONTROLLER, PERC6II,

620 CONTROLLER, SERIAL ATTACHED SCSI, H310, ADAPTER

So far so good

 

[HoneyBadger]

Well, it works, but I can't speak for "how long" - and using ZFS on top of hardware RAID is generally known around here as "asking for trouble."

If you have the time (and ability to back up the data!) I'd highly recommend flashing all of the cards one-by-one to their LSI equivalents and setting up proper ZFS volumes on the raw disks.

The PERC 6i/R is a 1068E and can be flashing following the instructions in this Hardforum thread, and the H310 is a 2008(B2) which can be flashed using sas2flash which is well-documented.