Disk Spinup causes issues playing content

[Tybio]

So I've been running for YEARS with Supermicro SATA HBAs, but in getting ready to setup a windows VM for my desktop I got 2xLSI 9207-8i cards.

 

I swapped them in and ever since when I'm watching content, a different disk spinning up will cause the media to stutter or even to freeze up.  It is like the working drive is "pausing" while waiting for the spin-up to finish.  I've never run into this before, and I see some mentions of others having the issue on the forums (but no resolutions that I can find).

 

Am I just missing something that a different search would pull up?  Or if this is just the way these cards work, then why on earth are they recommended?

[Tybio]

Just in case it matters, Diags attached.

storage-diagnostics-20180517-1755.zip

[s.Oliver]

well, some similar stuff i see here too. but, i haven't diagnosed, if this is related to an HBA or not.

just right now, i had two occurrences with just 1 hr 15 mins. in between and this happened:

 

a plex client was streaming a movie, suddenly the playback froze for probably 10-15 secs. and then resumed. at the same time i could verify, that a remote backup to the unRAID server had to delete some files, which forced the two parity drives to spin-up. also at the same time all recordings within TVHeadend (docker) had errors logged. in the next 75 mins. unused drives spun-down (after the 30 mins. delay i've set) and then the exact same scenario repeated: streamed movie froze, all recordings TVH done logged errors (again the spin-up of the parity drives – for write/delete operations in a share – caused this).

 

i'll watch this (hopefully) more closely soon.

Edited May 24, 2018 by s.Oliver

[Tybio]

I've had no luck with this, I've tried both the active streams and file activity plugin to try to track things..but those are just me trying to reduce spin-ups which I'm seeing without any file activity to justify them.

 

As to the pausing during disk spin up, I'm at the end of my rope...the first time I've been in this position in over 10 years of using unRAID.

 

I'm actually considering going back to the SAS2LP cards and just praying they will work with IOMMU when I get around to it.  I'd really like the LSI cards to not suck, but as the issue showed up when I switched to them...I've no other path to go down.

[Tybio]

Ok, some more details.  If I spin down all disks, then spin them up while streaming there is no interruption in SMB read.  I've even tried spinning down and then spinning up/down disks one by one and can't replicate it.

 

This seems to be an issue when there is an actual read or write waiting on the spin-up.  Going to do some testing on that now.

[Tybio]

Confirmed, disk spin up/spin down without OS read/write pending has no impact.

 

If I cat a text file on a spun down disk, reading files on already active disks freezes (key symptom is playback freezes in Kodi until other disk finishes spin up).

 

Again, no idea if any of this is useful or if anyone is actually reading the thread.  I might just be talking to myself!

[coolspot]

I'm having the same problem - actually lots of problems with a LSI 2308 HBA and a LSI expander ... there seems to be a lot of IO WAIT problems which manifests itself in different ways including interrupting a stream if a disk needs to spin up.

[Squid]

If you're using kodi then you can adjust its cache settings, and you'll never notice it again

Sent from my NSA monitored device

[mindedc]

Necropost here. Has this issue been addressed? I just upgraded to 6.9.2 which has remedied several other performance problems I've had and I'm re-invested in making the most of my unraid setup.  I was hoping that there is some kind of remedy for this issue, even if it means swapping controllers. Any advise?

 

To be specific I am running two LSI SAS 2008 boards, 16 drives total including SSD cache. Perhaps there is another HBA that is not susceptible to the issue?

 

Thanks

Edited June 23, 2021 by mindedc