Trying to troubleshoot spindown on LSI-9300-16i

[apandey]

I have been trying to troubleshoot why my array disks won't spindown. Reaching a dead end and would appreciate some tips on how to investigate further

Here is my setup

 

My setup is to have minimal array read / writes. Most stuff goes to the 2 pools. Even within array, disk 4 should get occasional writes while others are expected to be idle through the day. Unassigned Dev 5 is a backup drive, used once a night. Dev 8 is a precleared spare not in use. 

Spindown is set to 1 hour in disk settings. 

 

I only see parity and Dev 5 stay in spindown. I expect most array drives to mostly spindown, and I don't see a reason why dev 8 should spin up at all

 

At this point I am suspecting the LSI 9300-16i, since the drives that do spin down are connected directly to the motherboard SATA. But I don't understand why this should be a problem in pure HBA mode

 

I have tried to use file activity plugin on array drives which confirms no array activity for a few hours and drives are still spun up. I am stuck at this point, since it confirms what I expect, but I don't know where to look next. Some ideas will help

[apandey]

Looking at this thread, it seems this HBA should support spindown. 

I believe I am on latest firmware. Attaching diagnostics if someone can spot an issue

godaam-diagnostics-20230129-1155.zip

[Vr2Io]

To troubleshoot HBA relate or not, try start array in maintenance mode, don't mount ZFS and UD.

Then click spin down ( global, not individual disk ), then all disk should spin down and monitoring any disk will spin up.

[apandey]

20 hours ago, Vr2Io said:

To troubleshoot HBA relate or not, try start array in maintenance mode, don't mount ZFS and UD.

Then click spin down ( global, not individual disk ), then all disk should spin down and monitoring any disk will spin up

Thanks, will give this a try next time when I can plan some downtime 

[apandey]

I did not have an opportunity to take the array offline yet, but I issued a global spin down to see what happens. 

 

As expected, all disks spun down, so at least spindown works. But slowly, one by one, all of them came back up within a few minutes, including the pre cleared unassigned drive that is completely unused. So seems spindown itself works, but something wakes up all the drives on the HBA

[Vr2Io]

 

On 1/29/2023 at 11:32 AM, apandey said:

disk 4 should get occasional writes while others are expected to be idle

 

 

In my experience, directory allocate cross different disk may cause spinup even the file ( same directory) allocate in disk 4, and there are some factor also affect spinup.

If you can't minimize the access, I advice you forget spindown for making life simple, Unraid spinup quit "sensitive".

 

FYR, I only access array for daily backup, so in this case it spindown well.

[Vr2Io]

3 hours ago, apandey said:

including the pre cleared unassigned drive that is completely unused.

 

You have Dev 1-11, you may try avoid use disk slot 1-11, i.e. use disk slot 21-25 for array disk.

I found this may help but no guarantee, this will void parity and need rebuild.

[JonathanM]

8 hours ago, Vr2Io said:

 

You have Dev 1-11, you may try avoid use disk slot 1-11, i.e. use disk slot 21-25 for array disk.

I found this may help but no guarantee, this will void parity and need rebuild.

As long as you don't add or remove array members, parity1 will remain valid regardless of slot assignments.

 

Parity2 is slot sensitive so would need to be rebuilt.

[apandey]

18 hours ago, Vr2Io said:

You have Dev 1-11, you may try avoid use disk slot 1-11, i.e. use disk slot 21-25 for array disk

I would like to understand this a bit more, why does this matter? I always thought the slots are logical in nature, and as mentioned parity 2 cares about them. But what's the relationship with spindown? And why would unassigned disks play into array slots being used? 

Edited January 31, 2023 by apandey