Hi Gang,

 

This is a long story. About 4 month ago I bought a used SM AOC-SASLP-MV8 used from eBay. I downgraded the firmware as instructed and system ran fine. Soon, drives w/ errors started to happen, damaged files, etc. Eventually I bought a new card from Newegg, and the problems have persisted.

 

I then moved to the much discussed dual Xeon procesor from eBay, 64GB of Ram also from eBay and a new $300 Supermicro motherboard. All I had from previous hardware were the drives, the sata cards and the cables.

 

Well, errors kept popping up... I ran all the drive's full SMART diagnostics and reiserfsck and xfrepairs along the way. Only conclusion is that it must be the sata cards or the cables. Currently I am running all drives off the mb ports and of an old 4-port PCI card that is painfully slow. I am doing a parity sync on 4TB and it says it will take 5 days at around 8.6 MB/s.

 

I have ordered 2 used of the Adaptec 1430SA:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/181629244484?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

But they are not due to arrive until next week.

 

QUESTIONS:

1) Should I be patient and wait for the Adaptec cards and expect no issues? I will upgrade firmware to latest.

2) Find it hard to believe that the 2 AOC-SASLP-MV8 would be bad. Could be bad cables -  I only have 2 of them. Anyone have a link for the correct cables?

3) Is there a way to "test" the reliability of the system? I don't want to wait for errors to occur to know something is not right. It makes me question the integrity of all my files. And I have had to re-download a lot of media files that got damaged along the way.

 

I am slowly moving all my data from reiserfs to xfs. But this will take a while with the slow SATA card and my fear that data is not being copied reliably.

 

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

H.

 

 

I'm not aware of any need to downgrade the SASLP firmware. In my experience they work straight out of the box. What versions did you move from and to?

 

Thank you John. I downgraded the firmware per the original post on SATA Controller thread:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12404.0

 

 

Hmmm... curious. That thread goes back a long way but I've never read it. I'm pretty sure the server I have that has a SASLP in it is running 3.1.0.21. I fitted it straight out of the box - it was old stock but had never been used - and the only thing I did was switch off INT 13h to stop the system waiting to see if it could find a bootable disk connected to it. I wasn't aware it had any RAID functionality at all. The next time I reboot it I'll plug in a monitor and take a look at the BIOS.

 

Not that any of this addresses your problem. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with your motherboard. I'm not heavily into virtualization and don't need such a high spec board, but hopefully someone else might have some experience. The only thing that comes to mind is that after years of being a solid performer the old Marvell-based controllers are falling out of favour, partly because there are faster alternatives at reasonable prices and partly because of this: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=40683.0. It may have some relevance, or maybe not.

 

I'd go with Option #1 (Be patient).  Since you've already got a couple of 1430SA's on the way, I'd simply wait for those => they're rock-solid cards in UnRAID.

 

I don't see any reason to keep doing any of the Reiser -> XFS transfers while the system is so slow with the old PCI card.  Just wait a few days for the 1430's.

 

 

I'd go with Option #1 (Be patient).  Since you've already got a couple of 1430SA's on the way, I'd simply wait for those => they're rock-solid cards in UnRAID.

 

I am looking for new cards too. In practice, would I see much speed drag from the 1430SA's being SATAII?

... would I see much speed drag from the 1430SA's being SATAII?

 

Not at all -- that's still a higher transfer rate than any modern rotating platter drive.  It would slow down SSDs, but not any traditional drive.

 

Thank you Gary... I will take your advice!!

 

The issue I am concerned about is that unRAID is comfortable using old hardware... the Adaptec bios is from 2010... I get that a lot of the older stuff is server/enterprise grade.

 

It is not easy to go to a store/online and buy a new card that does not have issues w/ unRAID and virtualization. Anyway just venting... looking forward to my new "vintage" Adaptec card. 

I don't know whether you would consider the LSI SAS9211-8i to be modern, but at least it's current and it works very well with unRAID. The fly in the ointment (there had to be one!) is that it can be unnecessarily complicated to flash it into IT mode. Once you've successfully flashed one though, the second and third are much easier.

I've had great success with the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8.  It works better than my genuine LSI card (the original M1015).

I've had great success with the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8.  It works better than my genuine LSI card (the original M1015).

 

There were a lot of issues with the SAS2LP's with the early v6 releases => have these all been resolved now ??

(I assume they have,  but since you actually have the card you're more likely to know the details)

 

Sold my SAS2LP cards off a few months ago.  Super slow parity checks and preclears that would timeout after like 30 seconds of starting. My IBM 1015 cards are working great.  LSI>Marvell. Lsi is the better chipset imo....

Git the Adaptec card and I am underwhelmed at the performance. I am only getting about 30 MB/s move speed.

 

I am considering the LSI IBM 1015... which I understand needs to be flashed to IT mode.... but

 

Big question is how do I test the "reliability" of the card and the data? The issue I had with the AOC was that the problems manifested themselves weeks later, when I had data corruption. If there a way to do the equivalent of a memtest for the card and a couple of test hard drives?

 

Thanks,

 

H.

Is the 1430SA in an x4 slot?    [Not just physically, but one that operates at x4 speeds)

 

And what drives are attached to it?

 

Thank you Gary.

 

Its actually on a PCI-E v.3.0 8X slot.

 

I have 2 more unused of the same type of slot on my Supermicro MB. I also have an un-used PCI-E 2.0 X4 (in 8X) on the motherboard.

 

Am I using it in the correct slot? I cant recall which drives are conncetd to the card... I know 3 of them are regular array drives. Its possible that the other is either parity or cache.

 

I do have a spare of the 1430SA cards as well. I bought it as a backup... would it help if I add it in and connect 2 drives to each?

 

4 other drives are connected to SAS ports on the motherboard. I used those slots once I gave up on the AOC card.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

H.

 

 

I've had great success with the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8.  It works better than my genuine LSI card (the original M1015).

 

There were a lot of issues with the SAS2LP's with the early v6 releases => have these all been resolved now ??

(I assume they have,  but since you actually have the card you're more likely to know the details)

 

I've had zero problems, including parity checks. 

You mention 30MB/s move speed, is this moving data from one array disk to another?

 

The controller used won't usually limit this type of operation, most often the speed problems are during parity checks/syncs and disk rebuilds, the Adaptec 1430 is capable of 200MB/s+ with 4 disks, so not usually an issue.

Thank you Johnnie.... Good to know that the Adaptec can handle higher speeds.

 

I get that 30 MB/s when copying from one array drive to another. Without any parity check or pre-clearing going on. It could be that I have 4 drives to ports on the motherboard labeled SAS. I had not used to ports previously. Those could be reason for slowdown.

 

Tonight or tomorrow, I will add the second Adaptec 1430 and do a test copy. I just started preclearing two 4TB drives this morning. Those are running at 150MBs/s in pre-clear Zeroing. Cannot recall which ports those drives are using.... most likely the regular SATA mb ports.

...

I get that 30 MB/s when copying from one array drive to another. Without any parity check or pre-clearing going on.

 

 

If you're copying from one array drive to another this will result in parity being maintained during the copy, so it results in 5 disk I/O's per sector you're copying => a read of the sector to copy; a read of the destination sector and the corresponding parity sector; and then writes to the destination sector and to the parity sector (with the updated parity).    I suspect this is what's going on [unless you do not have a parity drive assigned].