530-8i (lsi 9440-8i) - Raid Benchmark results (ssd)

[james23]

while im waiting to see if crossflashing and or an obnixous 80$ LSI cable will let me do NVMe raid1 on this card ("Tri-mode") , ie the saga over at this thread:
https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...3408-got-myself-a-530-8i-on-ebay.21588/page-4.
i decided to run some normal ssd/sas raid benchmarks for my notes, and post them here too.

some notes:
im running the latest LENOVO FW (jan 2019 release), not LSI fw, but i dont think that should matter much for these tests.
+ This card (9440-8i) has NO cache, so keep that i mind for RAID 5/6 performance
+ system is baremetal, x10 SRL-F , e5 2620 v3 , 64g d4 ecc
+ SSDs ARE CAPABLE OF SAS3 12g, (and card showed link at sas3 12g, but bc of the TQ backplane, i had to lock the cards link rate at sas2 6g, via LSA gui. I tried running at sas3 but had nonstop issues, as expected)
+so far i have NOT been able to pull SMART data from the cards behind this adaptor, ive only tried with windows smartmon tools , and w latest version of HardDisk Sentinel (both of which normally pull smart data from drives behind LSI cards, maybe it bc of the lenovo OEM fw?) (not good!)

lenovo spec PDF: https://lenovopress.com/lp0651.pdf
lsi spec pdf: https://cdn.competec.ch/documents/5/8/587385/DE_Datenblatt_SAS-9460-8i.pdf

drives:
i have/using 6x of this SSD (nice!): 200g -HUSMM812CLAR200 (PDF specs - https://documents.westerndigital.co...-sas-series/data-sheet-ultrastar-ssd800mm.pdf)


and using 1x of this SSD (nicer!): 200g - -HUSMM1620ASS204 (PDF specs -
https://documents.westerndigital.co...sas-series/data-sheet-ultrastar-ssd1600mm.pdf


a question im curious about and hope others can answer- Seeing all the specs above, and my test results below, do you think the results would have been different if i had SAS3 Links / DA backplanes ?

I normally do FIO benches too, but didnt have time this time (and i usually prefer to run FIO on linux not win).
---

Not so good that raid 50 performance is worse than raid5. may show that card/card cpu is being maxed (which it really shouldnt be at this late generation LSI card)

also , please correct me if im wrong, but i would have expected to see a bit more performance out of all these benchmarks, considering the drives used (esp the RAID 5, even with no cache onboard). But maybe im wrong, as i think with no cache onboard, these are essentially SYNC / Write Through writes? (ie not async nor write back), so maybe then they are good?

im about to swap it with a Adaptec 71645 to compare speeds (even though that adpatec is one gen behind this LSI, so i should be using a adapatec 8805, but that card is being used currently)

 

[azev]

Looks like this controller works well as HBA instead of hardware raid controller.

 

[james23]

Looks like this controller works well as HBA instead of hardware raid controller.

ha, i know, i was kind of thinking that too. although to be fair, it may be bc it has no cache onboard. (i dont have alot of info/experience with LSI hw raid and no cache card to know for sure though)

 

[james23]

dang, just had to post this quickly, 1st test i ran on the adaptec 71685, which is sas2 based card, in RD0 , and with only 6x drives (not 7x like above on the LSI). will post some rd5 /6 too
(same 6x/7x drives, but for some reason one of the 7x kept dropping in/out so this is with 6x drives):

 

[SPCRich]

Dumb question, but isn't this supposed to show something during post? I got one off eBay, and I don't see anytgian during post on either of my desktops. I was trying to cross flash it, but it doesn't show up on windows and I don't see anything in post like I would an LSI card

 

[james23]

Dumb question, but isn't this supposed to show something during post? I got one off eBay, and I don't see anytgian during post on either of my desktops. I was trying to cross flash it, but it doesn't show up on windows and I don't see anything in post like I would an LSI card

ah, this is good info for our larger thread. it seems all 530-8i w lenovo FW do this.

in the MB's bios, you need to set the PCIe slot's OPRom to use LEGACY mode (not uefi, and not disabled). what kind of board do you have? i know this option is aval. in supermicro x9 and x10 boards, under Pcie/pcin... slots.

here is a screen shot from our other thread of the setting you need to change (you need to set this to LEGACY for the pcie slot that you have the 530-8i card in. this has nothing to do with the BOOT mode you have your bios set to)

 

[SPCRich]

ah, this is good info for our larger thread. it seems all 530-8i w lenovo FW do this.

in the MB's bios, you need to set the PCIe slot's OPRom to use LEGACY mode (not uefi, and not disabled). what kind of board do you have? i know this option is aval. in supermicro x9 and x10 boards, under Pcie/pcin... slots.

here is a screen shot from our other thread of the setting you need to change (you need to set this to LEGACY for the pcie slot that you have the 530-8i card in. this has nothing to do with the BOOT mode you have your bios set to)

View attachment 10627

I attempted this on two desktop boards, as I didn't have a free server to try this in. Both ended up not having a UEFI shell anyway, but they were a MSI Z97S Krait board and a Gigabyte Z370 Aurous Gaming 7 board. Neither offered the option for changing Option rom settings for PCIE slots, so it looks like I'll have to try getting a spare server to try this on. Thanks for the tip, it wasn't covered in the original instructions I had found on these forums.

 

[james23]

fyi,
> Both ended up not having a UEFI shell anyway
this does not matter/apply to your issue (you can "make" a uefi shell via a boot usb stick)- either way you dont need a uefi shell.

can you try setting the board to just LEGACY mode (under boot options). this might have the same effect as you dont have the PCIE slot specific settings like SM boards have.
tks

 

[SPCRich]

fyi,
> Both ended up not having a UEFI shell anyway
this does not matter/apply to your issue (you can "make" a uefi shell via a boot usb stick)- either way you dont need a uefi shell.

can you try setting the board to just LEGACY mode (under boot options). this might have the same effect as you dont have the PCIE slot specific settings like SM boards have.
tks

sorry for the late reply, i tried that but couldn't get it to work. I've bought a new board to upgrade my file server, and now have the card working on that board. Thanks!

 

[james23]

ok cool, tks for update. yea im finding short of flashing this card over to real LSI IT mode firmware, this card has a good amount of BS with it (ie when using the lenovo FW and raid).

its not horrible, but updating to the latest lenovo FW from a month or 2 ago, does help. (ie just one example, but i was having an issue where LSA, the new web gui MegaRaid, would not update/show LD changes until after you did a reboot. also it would sometimes tell me unused drives were IN USE when i tried to add them to a new array). the newer FW seems to have fixed that. (and prior to the new FW i was using FW that was from 3 or 4 mo. ago, so not all that old.)

that + these 530-8i not support NVMe for no real reason, makes me want to run real lsi 9440 card, when needed. (even though ive yet to test raid1 nvme performance with those yet).

 

[Raice]

in the MB's bios, you need to set the PCIe slot's OPRom to use LEGACY mode

Don't do that. Instead, switch boot to UEFI, oprom to EFI and management tool will be available right from UEFI BIOS Setup. Just tested it with X10SRL-F.

 

[jason huang]

while im waiting to see if crossflashing and or an obnixous 80$ LSI cable will let me do NVMe raid1 on this card ("Tri-mode") , ie the saga over at this thread:
https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...3408-got-myself-a-530-8i-on-ebay.21588/page-4.
i decided to run some normal ssd/sas raid benchmarks for my notes, and post them here too.

some notes:
im running the latest LENOVO FW (jan 2019 release), not LSI fw, but i dont think that should matter much for these tests.
+ This card (9440-8i) has NO cache, so keep that i mind for RAID 5/6 performance
+ system is baremetal, x10 SRL-F , e5 2620 v3 , 64g d4 ecc
+ SSDs ARE CAPABLE OF SAS3 12g, (and card showed link at sas3 12g, but bc of the TQ backplane, i had to lock the cards link rate at sas2 6g, via LSA gui. I tried running at sas3 but had nonstop issues, as expected)
+so far i have NOT been able to pull SMART data from the cards behind this adaptor, ive only tried with windows smartmon tools , and w latest version of HardDisk Sentinel (both of which normally pull smart data from drives behind LSI cards, maybe it bc of the lenovo OEM fw?) (not good!)

lenovo spec PDF: https://lenovopress.com/lp0651.pdf
lsi spec pdf: https://cdn.competec.ch/documents/5/8/587385/DE_Datenblatt_SAS-9460-8i.pdf

drives:
i have/using 6x of this SSD (nice!): 200g -HUSMM812CLAR200 (PDF specs - https://documents.westerndigital.co...-sas-series/data-sheet-ultrastar-ssd800mm.pdf)
View attachment 10612

and using 1x of this SSD (nicer!): 200g - -HUSMM1620ASS204 (PDF specs -
https://documents.westerndigital.co...sas-series/data-sheet-ultrastar-ssd1600mm.pdf
View attachment 10611

a question im curious about and hope others can answer- Seeing all the specs above, and my test results below, do you think the results would have been different if i had SAS3 Links / DA backplanes ?

I normally do FIO benches too, but didnt have time this time (and i usually prefer to run FIO on linux not win).
---

Not so good that raid 50 performance is worse than raid5. may show that card/card cpu is being maxed (which it really shouldnt be at this late generation LSI card)

also , please correct me if im wrong, but i would have expected to see a bit more performance out of all these benchmarks, considering the drives used (esp the RAID 5, even with no cache onboard). But maybe im wrong, as i think with no cache onboard, these are essentially SYNC / Write Through writes? (ie not async nor write back), so maybe then they are good?

im about to swap it with a Adaptec 71645 to compare speeds (even though that adpatec is one gen behind this LSI, so i should be using a adapatec 8805, but that card is being used currently)


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[jason huang]

Hey James23, Did you cross flash your 530-8i to 9440-8i success?

 

[xi_Slick_ix]

Quick question - and I know this is an older thread, so sorry if I'm resurrecting the dead here.

I've got one of these cards (530-8i) in a Lenovo ST550. Its our only physical server, a domain controller (everything else is virtual) and whoever ordered it went cheap and got 3 300GB 15k Toshiba Spinning Rust (Raid 1 + Spare). I've got a pretty tight budget to replace those drives ($600) and am probably looking at 512GB 980 Pros for a Raid 10.

I'm guessing this raid card does not care what disks you give it, but just curious if anyone has tried SATA drives with the 530-8i.

Thanks!

 

[jason huang]

This card work with sata and sas drives

 

[xi_Slick_ix]

Thanks Jason!