Supermicro MBD-X7SBE-O - Level 1 testing

[starcat]

Cool :-) Great setup!

[ix400]

All the hardware is in place except for some of the the hard drives. I have done this round of testing with only 5 drives. Eventually this will be a 16 drives system (1 parity, 1 cache, 14 data).

 

Key Features:

 

1. Intel® Xeon® 3000 Sequence and

    Core™ 2 Quad / Duo Series in LGA775

    Package (FSB 1333/1066/800 MHz)

2. Intel® 3210 + ICH9R Chipset

3. Up to 8GB unbuffered ECC / non-ECC

    DDR2 800/667 SDRAM

4. Intel® 82573V + Intel® 82573L

    PCI-E Gigabit Controllers

5. Built-in SATA ICH9R Controller

    6x SATA (3 Gbps) Drive with

    RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 Support

6. 1 (x8) PCI-Express,

    1 (x4) PCI-Express,

    2 64 bit 133MHz PCI-X,

    2 64 bit 100MHz PCI-X

7. On board ATI ES1000 32MB Graphics

8. SIM1U IPMI 2.0

 

Manufacturer: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/3210/X7SBE.cfm

 

Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182142&Tpk=x7sbe

 

These are the rest of the system components:

 

* Case: Antec 1200

* 4x drive cages (4-in-3):  CoolerMaster STB-3T4-E3-GP

* PSU: PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750

* CPU: E6750, stock fan

* Memory: ECC 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800 (Crucial CT2KIT25672AA800)

* 2x PCI-X controllers: AOC-SAT2-MV8

* nic: intel 1000 CT, PCI-E

* Parity hard drive: WD 1.0TB Green (WD10EADS) <- used only for some of the tests

* Cache drive: none

* Data drives: x3 WD 1TB Green (WD10EADS), x1 WD 1.5TB Green (WD15EADS)

* USB flash (boot device): Patriot mini 4GB, FAT32, unRAID 4.5beta6

 

Memory: memtest86+ run for 24hrs with no errors

 

Speed testing without parity:

 

Writing to disk1:         65-75 MB/sec

Reading from disk1: 95-105 MB/sec

Writing to a share: 49-51 MB/sec

Reading from a share: 75-95 MB/sec

 

Generating Parity data (WD10EADS): 48 - 58 MB/sec ~280 min

 

Speed testing with parity:

 

Writing to disk1:         14-15 MB/sec

Reading from disk1: 95-105 MB/sec

Writing to a share: 11.5-12 MB/sec

Reading from a share: 95-105 MB/sec

 

drive temps (load): between 30C and 33C, idle <30C

 

Is 11-12MB/sec write speed OK? I plan to use a faster drive for parity than the WD 1TB Green I used for this test. Hopefully that will improve speed a bit.

 

Luca

 

Hi Luca,

 

what SATA controllers do ypu have installed additionally to the built in controlers of the board?

 

Cheers

 

Chris

 

[WeeboTech]

* Parity hard drive: WD 1.0TB Green (WD10EADS) <- used only for some of the tests

* Cache drive:   none

* Data drives:    x3 WD 1TB Green (WD10EADS), x1 WD 1.5TB Green (WD15EADS)Luca

 

Hi Luca,

 

what SATA controllers do ypu have installed additionally to the built in controlers of the board?

 

Cheers

 

Chris

 

 

Part of the issue is the use of green 5400RPM drives.

That's about what I had on other motherboads with a WD Green drive for parity and data.

Switching to a 1.5TB Seagate 7200RPM 32MB cache drive for partiy and using the same for my most critical small fileserver storage beefed it up a great deal.

Tweaking to the unRAID MD driver brought it even higher.

 

With latest unRAID I was getting 30MB/s with the seagate drives for parity and important data.

I would get from 22 to 30 for the 1TB WD drives. but they are EACS 16MB drives.

 

After a bunch of tweaking I get from 30-50MB/s on bursts.

But I have 8GB and a number of tweaks to the kernel and MD driver.

[BobPhoenix]

Hi Luca,

 

what SATA controllers do ypu have installed additionally to the built in controlers of the board?

 

Cheers

 

Chris

 

Your answer to this is in Luca's signature "2xAOC-SAT2-MV8" it is the SuperMicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 the same cards I have in my X7SBE.

[luca]

Hi Luca,

 

what SATA controllers do ypu have installed additionally to the built in controlers of the board?

 

Cheers

 

Chris

 

Your answer to this is in Luca's signature "2xAOC-SAT2-MV8" it is the SuperMicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 the same cards I have in my X7SBE.

 

Yup that is correct, two AOC-SAT2-MV8, old school. I just replaced the drive cages on both servers with Norco SS-400 (I was tired of taking everything apart just to replace a drive). Great motherboard (and controllers), no complaints.