October 6, 201510 yr As reported earlier my issue are not around slow parity sync but data errors. I was starting 2x parity sync run's yesterday. 127 errors were reported and in both check's the same sectors were shown (NONCORRECT option). This would usually mean that the data is indeed incorrect and I should run another parity sync this time using the CORRECT option. I experienced the same symptoms. In my case it seemed like problems encountered during the parity check (drives red-balling, SAS/SATA resets, etc) caused an issue where the correct parity values were not written, and the same sectors would come up each time a parity check was run. In my case moving all drives onto the SAS2LP and ensuring they were spun up ahead of time finally eliminated the red-balls and got me a clean parity check, but that workaround hasn't helped everyone.
October 6, 201510 yr As reported earlier my issue are not around slow parity sync but data errors. I was starting 2x parity sync run's yesterday. 127 errors were reported and in both check's the same sectors were shown (NONCORRECT option). This would usually mean that the data is indeed incorrect and I should run another parity sync this time using the CORRECT option. I experienced the same symptoms. In my case it seemed like problems encountered during the parity check (drives red-balling, SAS/SATA resets, etc) caused an issue where the correct parity values were not written, and the same sectors would come up each time a parity check was run. In my case moving all drives onto the SAS2LP and ensuring they were spun up ahead of time finally eliminated the red-balls and got me a clean parity check, but that workaround hasn't helped everyone. Not sure if it's applicable here, but I had issued with parity errors during parity checks consistently until I set my parity drive to never spin down. I have no clue why this fixed things, but it did. This was also with me having all my drives on SAS2LP cards.
October 6, 201510 yr Thanks guy's .... good to know that I'm not the only one. I'm running another parity check now with the option "Parity never spin down" but I do not trust this crappy adapter anymore. I'm bidding for an IBM M1115 now which has a reasonable price tag. Let's see.... P.S. I saw the first errors coming up again...cancelling the parity check. This is frustrating.
October 7, 201510 yr Thanks guy's .... good to know that I'm not the only one. I'm running another parity check now with the option "Parity never spin down" but I do not trust this crappy adapter anymore. I'm bidding for an IBM M1115 now which has a reasonable price tag. Let's see.... P.S. I saw the first errors coming up again...cancelling the parity check. This is frustrating. When you say "Parity never spin down" I am assuming you mean that on the parity disk you've set the spin down delay to never, correct? I am not sure where else this could be set, but since your phrasing is different I just wanted to confirm you are doing the same thing I did.
October 11, 201510 yr Installed my freshly flashed Dell Perc H310 cards few weeks back and operating normal again, with normal parity check speeds. Everyone just dump your Supermicro SAS(2LP) cards and get the Dell H310 Perc which flashes very easy with Dell's own IT mode.
October 11, 201510 yr I'm really surprised SuperMicro hasn't addressed this issue. The AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 is actually a very good controller ... works perfectly WHEN it has the correct drivers, as it clearly did in v5 and does in Windows OS's. Clearly the 64-bit driver used for it in v6 is NOT a good driver => and I'd have certainly thought that with all the issues that have been noted by UnRAID users that this would have been resolved long ago. Obviously I would definitely NOT recommend buying one of these cards now -- but the older SASLP-MV8 card is still a good choice (and is available very inexpensively).
October 11, 201510 yr Obviously I would definitely NOT recommend buying one of these cards now -- but the older SASLP-MV8 card is still a good choice (and is available very inexpensively). How much slower is the SASLP? I know they're only rated at 3Gb/s but I'm not sure that means parity checks would be at half speed. I've been looking for a good out-of-the-box controller. Don't have any Windows machines/licenses that I can use to flash a card.
October 11, 201510 yr Community Expert This is what I get during a parity check with a SASLP depending on the number of disks used: 4 x 140MB/s 5 x 110MB/s 6 x 93MB/s 7 x 80MB/s 8 x 72.5MB/s
October 11, 201510 yr How much slower is the SASLP? I know they're only rated at 3Gb/s but I'm not sure that means parity checks would be at half speed. I've been looking for a good out-of-the-box controller. Don't have any Windows machines/licenses that I can use to flash a card. Johnnie.black has an excellent post showing speed tests for various contollers. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=43026.msg410578#msg410578 I have seen IBM M1015's preflashed to IT mode on ebay. It seems like you pay about a $15 premium.
October 11, 201510 yr This is what I get during a parity check with a SASLP depending on the number of disks used: 4 x 140MB/s 5 x 110MB/s 6 x 93MB/s 7 x 80MB/s 8 x 72.5MB/s These numbers are meaningless without knowing the exact drives you connected to the controller to get them. I'd actually expect FAR better speeds from 8 drives. The fact it's a SATA-3 device doesn't slow parity checks at all ... NO modern drive can support sustained transfers at even close to SATA-3 speeds, so that has no impact at all on parity speeds. What DOES restrict the speeds is that it is not a PCIe v2 card, so with 4 lanes it's limited to 1000MB/s of bandwidth -- or 125MB/s/drive. Modern high-density (1TB/platter or higher) drives can transfer faster than that on the outer cylinders, so that will somewhat limit parity check speeds ... but not by anywhere close to half. You'd not likely get the full theoretical bandwidth (125MB/s), but I would expect to see ~ 115MB/s even with 8 drives if they were all 1TB/platter units.
October 11, 201510 yr This is what I get during a parity check with a SASLP depending on the number of disks used: 4 x 140MB/s 5 x 110MB/s 6 x 93MB/s 7 x 80MB/s 8 x 72.5MB/s These numbers are meaningless without knowing the exact drives you connected to the controller to get them. I'd actually expect FAR better speeds from 8 drives. The fact it's a SATA-3 device doesn't slow parity checks at all ... NO modern drive can support sustained transfers at even close to SATA-3 speeds, so that has no impact at all on parity speeds. What DOES restrict the speeds is that it is not a PCIe v2 card, so with 4 lanes it's limited to 1000MB/s of bandwidth -- or 125MB/s/drive. Modern high-density (1TB/platter or higher) drives can transfer faster than that on the outer cylinders, so that will somewhat limit parity check speeds ... but not by anywhere close to half. You'd not likely get the full theoretical bandwidth (125MB/s), but I would expect to see ~ 115MB/s even with 8 drives if they were all 1TB/platter units. Read the full post linked above your reply and quoted below for details How much slower is the SASLP? I know they're only rated at 3Gb/s but I'm not sure that means parity checks would be at half speed. I've been looking for a good out-of-the-box controller. Don't have any Windows machines/licenses that I can use to flash a card. Johnnie.black has an excellent post showing speed tests for various contollers. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=43026.msg410578#msg410578 I have seen IBM M1015's preflashed to IT mode on ebay. It seems like you pay about a $15 premium.
October 11, 201510 yr This is what I get during a parity check with a SASLP depending on the number of disks used: 4 x 140MB/s 5 x 110MB/s 6 x 93MB/s 7 x 80MB/s 8 x 72.5MB/s These numbers are meaningless without knowing the exact drives you connected to the controller to get them. I'd actually expect FAR better speeds from 8 drives. The fact it's a SATA-3 device doesn't slow parity checks at all ... NO modern drive can support sustained transfers at even close to SATA-3 speeds, so that has no impact at all on parity speeds. What DOES restrict the speeds is that it is not a PCIe v2 card, so with 4 lanes it's limited to 1000MB/s of bandwidth -- or 125MB/s/drive. Modern high-density (1TB/platter or higher) drives can transfer faster than that on the outer cylinders, so that will somewhat limit parity check speeds ... but not by anywhere close to half. You'd not likely get the full theoretical bandwidth (125MB/s), but I would expect to see ~ 115MB/s even with 8 drives if they were all 1TB/platter units. If you didnt click through to the linked post, they were all SSD drives.
October 11, 201510 yr Interesting ... an all-SSD array. I missed that distinction earlier. Nevertheless, some of the results are very surprising ... e.g. that an SASLP-MV8 with 4 drives is so much slower than an Adaptec 1430SA. But I agree that with all SSD drives the results aren't being biased by drive densities.
October 11, 201510 yr Community Expert Interesting ... an all-SSD array. I missed that distinction earlier. Nevertheless, some of the results are very surprising ... e.g. that an SASLP-MV8 with 4 drives is so much slower than an Adaptec 1430SA. But I agree that with all SSD drives the results aren't being biased by drive densities. Agree that the performance of the SASLP is not great for the available bandwidth, it was slightly better on Unraid V5 but not by much, these are my results with 4 SSDs: V5.0.6 V6.0.0 V6.0.1 V6.1.0 V6.1.1 V6.1.2 V6.1.3 145.5 142.3 141.0 139.2 139.8 139.2 139.2
October 11, 201510 yr Sounds like the pre flashed M1015's might be a better option. Not really crazy about buying used controllers though. Is there a better out of the box option? PCIe v2 maybe?
October 11, 201510 yr I suspect this Adaptec card would perform very nicely, although I don't see anyone using it with UnRAID in this forum. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103231 It's a 4-lane, PCIe v2 card, so will have 2000GB/s of bandwidth available ... or 250GB/s/disk => which is well above what any spinning disk can sustain.
October 11, 201510 yr Sounds like the pre flashed M1015's might be a better option. Not really crazy about buying used controllers though. Is there a better out of the box option? PCIe v2 maybe? Buying anything used is a bit of a gamble, no doubt. You may want to look at a new Dell Perc H310. I think @Opentoe has posted about good results with them. You flash them to work as a m1015 when flashed. They are a bit cheaper. People recommend you use the fw from Dell. That said, I know a lot of people who have purchased m1015s from eBay and been perfectly happy (myself included). If you buy from someone selling a lot, they are usually pulled new or near new from servers where they are not needed. The one I got looked brand new and I have had zero issues.
October 12, 201510 yr Sounds like the pre flashed M1015's might be a better option. Not really crazy about buying used controllers though. Is there a better out of the box option? PCIe v2 maybe? Buying anything used is a bit of a gamble, no doubt. You may want to look at a new Dell Perc H310. I think @Opentoe has posted about good results with them. You flash them to work as a m1015 when flashed. They are a bit cheaper. People recommend you use the fw from Dell. That said, I know a lot of people who have purchased m1015s from eBay and been perfectly happy (myself included). If you buy from someone selling a lot, they are usually pulled new or near new from servers where they are not needed. The one I got looked brand new and I have had zero issues. I'm sure there are quite a few options if I had some way to flash the cards, but I don't have any windows machines. Normally I don't miss them but without one I'm looking at getting out-of-the-box controllers or pre flashed. Unless there is some way to flash one of these cards on a Mac? I've been looking, but all the instructions I've found involve Windows. I can run Windows on a Mac but I just can't see buying the license just to do the flash.
October 12, 201510 yr I suspect this Adaptec card would perform very nicely, although I don't see anyone using it with UnRAID in this forum. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103231 It's a 4-lane, PCIe v2 card, so will have 2000GB/s of bandwidth available ... or 250GB/s/disk => which is well above what any spinning disk can sustain. Thanks. Are you saying that this card should work without needing to be flashed?
October 12, 201510 yr I'm sure there are quite a few options if I had some way to flash the cards, but I don't have any windows machines. Normally I don't miss them but without one I'm looking at getting out-of-the-box controllers or pre flashed. Unless there is some way to flash one of these cards on a Mac? I've been looking, but all the instructions I've found involve Windows. I can run Windows on a Mac but I just can't see buying the license just to do the flash. I just flashed mine on the mb I use for unRAID. I used a freedos + UEFI Shell usb key to do the flash. Did not use Windows @ all.
October 12, 201510 yr I'm sure there are quite a few options if I had some way to flash the cards, but I don't have any windows machines. Normally I don't miss them but without one I'm looking at getting out-of-the-box controllers or pre flashed. Unless there is some way to flash one of these cards on a Mac? I've been looking, but all the instructions I've found involve Windows. I can run Windows on a Mac but I just can't see buying the license just to do the flash. I just flashed mine on the mb I use for unRAID. I used a freedos usb key to do the flash. Did not use Windows @ all. Are there any kind of instructions for this? I'm way out of my element. I know almost as much about DOS as I do about Windows.
October 12, 201510 yr I'm sure there are quite a few options if I had some way to flash the cards, but I don't have any windows machines. Normally I don't miss them but without one I'm looking at getting out-of-the-box controllers or pre flashed. Unless there is some way to flash one of these cards on a Mac? I've been looking, but all the instructions I've found involve Windows. I can run Windows on a Mac but I just can't see buying the license just to do the flash. I just flashed mine on the mb I use for unRAID. I used a freedos usb key to do the flash. Did not use Windows @ all. Are there any kind of instructions for this? I'm way out of my element. I know almost as much about DOS as I do about Windows. There are loads of blog posting and threads (incl. here @ LT forums) detailing how to flash. It's not terribly difficult, but it's not formally supported I don't think, so you're on your own to research and flash. Googling "m1015 flash" should yield a lot of info. At least enough for you to decide if its beyond your comfortability. A common issue that you'll want to research is whether you'll need to use a UEFI shell or if you can do it directly with your motherboard. A couple of posts to get you going: http://www.0x00.to/post/2013/04/07/Flash-IBM-ServeRAID-M1015-to-LSI9211-8i-with-UEFI-mainboard http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=25891.0
October 12, 201510 yr Sounds like the pre flashed M1015's might be a better option. Not really crazy about buying used controllers though. Is there a better out of the box option? PCIe v2 maybe? If you want a new M1015 newegg (3rd party) has them at a steep premium: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA67S25J8482 The Dell H310 is definitely a better option: http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=342-4202
October 12, 201510 yr The Dell H310 is definitely a better option: http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=342-4202 The H200 is also working (with vertical connectors). http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=342-2604
October 12, 201510 yr The Dell H310 is definitely a better option: http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=342-4202 The H200 is also working (with vertical connectors). http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=342-2604 And these will work without needing to be flashed?
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