Terrible Disk Read/Write I/O Speeds

[Nicolas1988]

Hi cyberjock,

I am new to freenas, and my boss told me to implement freenas so that to provide share storage for vmware(vmotion, HA, etc)....

My Hardware is currently as follows:
- Motherboard: Supermicro(supports maximum 2 prcessors, but currently have 1 quad core Xeon E5410)
- 8 x 2GB RAM
- 2 x ARC-1680 PCIEx8 RAID Controller – DRAM: 512 MB / Channels : 8
(each card will be connected to 10 x HDD SATA 7.2k RPM)
Thus a total of 20 x 2TB HDD SATA = 40TB

I done lots of research and it is advisable by freenas to not using raid controller and to plug the SATA cable directly on the motherboard, but in my case it is not possible, thus i am compel to use the Raid Controller as interface between freenas and the HDD. Furthermore, as per Freenas documentation I have set Raid controller to JBOD Mode)

My questions concerning performance are as follows:
1. Do I need to remove the 512 DRAM currently on the Raid Controllers or other of deactivation of the Raid controller cache to get the best performance?
2. Do I need to do other fine tuning of the Raid controller?
3. Do you think that 16GB RAM will be sufficient for 40TB of raw storage
4. If I need best performance and best security, and considering of another HDD failure possibility during a rebuilt after the replacement of a fail HDD(2TB HDD), which
Raidz/Mirror would you prefer?
3. When you talk about HBA and Raid Controller, is it not the same thing?

Thanking you in adavance

Regards

Nicolas

 

[SweetAndLow]

Hi cyberjock,

I am new to freenas, and my boss told me to implement freenas so that to provide share storage for vmware(vmotion, HA, etc)....

My Hardware is currently as follows:
- Motherboard: Supermicro(supports maximum 2 prcessors, but currently have 1 quad core Xeon E5410)
- 8 x 2GB RAM
- 2 x ARC-1680 PCIEx8 RAID Controller – DRAM: 512 MB / Channels : 8
(each card will be connected to 10 x HDD SATA 7.2k RPM)
Thus a total of 20 x 2TB HDD SATA = 40TB

I done lots of research and it is advisable by freenas to not using raid controller and to plug the SATA cable directly on the motherboard, but in my case it is not possible, thus i am compel to use the Raid Controller as interface between freenas and the HDD. Furthermore, as per Freenas documentation I have set Raid controller to JBOD Mode)

My questions concerning performance are as follows:
1. Do I need to remove the 512 DRAM currently on the Raid Controllers or other of deactivation of the Raid controller cache to get the best performance?
2. Do I need to do other fine tuning of the Raid controller?
3. Do you think that 16GB RAM will be sufficient for 40TB of raw storage
4. If I need best performance and best security, and considering of another HDD failure possibility during a rebuilt after the replacement of a fail HDD(2TB HDD), which
Raidz/Mirror would you prefer?
3. When you talk about HBA and Raid Controller, is it not the same thing?

Thanking you in adavance

Regards

Nicolas

Start your own thread and also your hardware is completely inadequate for your application. Don't use raid cards, get 64GB of ecc memory or more and us 2 disk mirrors.

 

[Nicolas1988]

Actually I do not have the privileged to start my own Threads(I can't see the button anywhere, so I deduced that I do not have the privilege yet). I have no choice i am compe to use the Raid Card as I can't connect the SATA cable on the motherboard. The Raid Card contains the proper SATA interface, which is connected to a drive cage(each drive cage can contain 4HDD)
Concerning the memory, it only supports a maximum of 16GB RAM.

do you have any suggestion, please?

 

[Ericloewe]

Actually I do not have the privileged to start my own Threads(I can't see the button anywhere, so I deduced that I do not have the privilege yet). I have no choice i am compe to use the Raid Card as I can't connect the SATA cable on the motherboard. The Raid Card contains the proper SATA interface, which is connected to a drive cage(each drive cage can contain 4HDD)
Concerning the memory, it only supports a maximum of 16GB RAM.

do you have any suggestion, please?

Top of any thread list.

And SweetAndLow already summed it up. Your proposed setup is completely inadequate. At the very least, get proper HBAs instead of RAID controllers - and your setup will still be slow.

 

[gpsguy]

Can we get a moderator to create a new new thread, starting at message #10.

 

[cyberjock]

Can we get a moderator to create a new new thread, starting at message #10.

Done