Anyone with 4 x Samsung 840 PRO's on RAID5 with LSI Card?

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cryptz

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Apr 9, 2013
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i am working on upgrading all of my ssds. there are 26 of them and ssd magician only lets you do 1 at a time and then it reboots the server. The server takes about 15 minutes to boot so this is an all day affair. unfortunately the iso cannot see my drives off of the adaptec series 7 controller, even in hba mode. i hope this ends up fixing the issue =)
 

cryptz

New Member
Apr 9, 2013
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i am working on upgrading all of my ssds. there are 26 of them and ssd magician only lets you do 1 at a time and then it reboots the server. The server takes about 15 minutes to boot so this is an all day affair. unfortunately the iso cannot see my drives off of the adaptec series 7 controller, even in hba mode. i hope this ends up fixing the issue =)
I would encourage people to try the new firmware. It is a little earlier to tell but I am noticing much better raid 5 write performance in windows and have not had a drive drop yet.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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please let us know if this can be done safely without reconstruction of raid. I'd prefer to take the server down, flash them all at once and put them all back, but sometimes you have to secure erase after a flash to get the full effect.

btw, what OP% are you doing 0%? 10%? 20%? 25%?
 

renderfarmer

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Feb 22, 2013
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please let us know if this can be done safely without reconstruction of raid. I'd prefer to take the server down, flash them all at once and put them all back, but sometimes you have to secure erase after a flash to get the full effect.

btw, what OP% are you doing 0%? 10%? 20%? 25%?
I'll back everything up properly and do it this weekend. What does OP% stand for?
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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the SM843 is supported by LSI, it is a samsung 840 pro with 240gb instead of 256gb and DAS (drive light).

the new firmware enabled DAS. So one then has to wonder.

And a birdy at samsung suggests not using OP is a very very bad thing with 840 pro. I'm asking the birdy what % is recommended but take a look at the sm843 and guess
 

renderfarmer

Member
Feb 22, 2013
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New Jersey
the SM843 is supported by LSI, it is a samsung 840 pro with 240gb instead of 256gb and DAS (drive light).

the new firmware enabled DAS. So one then has to wonder.

And a birdy at samsung suggests not using OP is a very very bad thing with 840 pro. I'm asking the birdy what % is recommended but take a look at the sm843 and guess
Thanks for the tip. I'll see if the update is non destructive but I'll then rebuild the array with 240GBs on each drive.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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yeah seems we had a raid-10 span (two of 4) fail after flashing. let me know if you find the same
 

mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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SM843 - same as 840 Pro except 240gb (built in OP)
SM843T - EMLC
PM843 - same as 840 non-pro with OP and DAS light and optional super cap

so who wants to find the oem's selling these and figure out how to cross flash? I'll guinea pig my ssd's :)

I've moved to 25'ish% OP (256GB to 180 formatted).

If anyone has logs or any stories they wish to contribute - now is the time. If you know what I'm saying you'll understand the importance to contribute information. now. If you speak korean, that would be even better.
 
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stenrulz

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Aug 20, 2012
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Hello,

I am currently looking into setting up a decent size RAID 0 array with 8 to 16 SSDs, most likely Samsung 840 pro or OCZ Vectors with Adaptec RAID 71605E or MegaRAID SAS 9286CV-8eCC. I have looked at the HBA cards as well but I would like the option to boot Windows of the array at some stage. From my understanding no software raids allow booting, LSI fastpath is similar to software raid to provide extra performance from your CPU but without the limitation. What RAID card and SSDs do you recommend? From my understanding most cards will be able to provide the MB/s but not the IOPS.

Thank you.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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the trend lately is two fold:

1. boot usb or boot off cheap SLC samsung older drives.

Sata Intel rstE is the fastest for sata ssd

then lsi or the 71605e

then the megaraid/p420/adaptec 71605 (standard raid).

SAS to SATA overhead costs you too much, so if you want SAS , buy SAS ssd !

Waste all that money on expensive megaraid or P420 - then you bypass the controller back to dumb mode (LSI FASTPATH, HP SMARTPATH[new!]) and well you might as well have stuck to the simple faster.

HP can boot eRST, LSI 2308 IT both with the HP VSA driver (esxi too!).

Fastpath is basically cut through switching - LSI and HP both have said it is designed mostly for several drives in raid-0 (ask them!).

Why pay more for less performance? silly.
 

stenrulz

New Member
Aug 20, 2012
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the trend lately is two fold:

1. boot usb or boot off cheap SLC samsung older drives.

Sata Intel rstE is the fastest for sata ssd
The issue with the Intel RST is the very limited number of Sata 3.0 ports.

then lsi or the 71605e
I have been looking into getting the LSI SAS 9207-8i or LSI SAS 9300-8i with IR raid 0 hardware raid. I have seen builds using these cards but in HBA and software raid, has anyone put 8 SSDs with IR raid 0 hardware raid? If so what was the maximum IOPS and throughput?


then the megaraid/p420/adaptec 71605 (standard raid).

SAS to SATA overhead costs you too much, so if you want SAS , buy SAS ssd !
Not really the SATA SSDs will provide more IOPS for the cost.

Waste all that money on expensive megaraid or P420 - then you bypass the controller back to dumb mode (LSI FASTPATH, HP SMARTPATH[new!]) and well you might as well have stuck to the simple faster.

HP can boot eRST, LSI 2308 IT both with the HP VSA driver (esxi too!).

Fastpath is basically cut through switching - LSI and HP both have said it is designed mostly for several drives in raid-0 (ask them!).

Why pay more for less performance? silly.
Reading up on the smartpath is seems to be for read only not write while the fastpath is for both. I understand that the fastpath feature basically makes the raid card firmware/software raid. Yes it is a bit stupid to go with a full blown hardware raid card and then have to disable those functions for the performance. What would be the best option for me? I would be looking at around 4GB/s and 500,000 IOPS but software raid i can not use, closest would be the fastpath or IR firmware.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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What type of data transfer are you looking at? linear or random? It's very easy to scale to linear IOPS, not so easy to scale to random due to latency.

Also depends on the controller and o/s and application.

Tell us more about what you are trying to do friend.
 

stenrulz

New Member
Aug 20, 2012
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I am currently trying to find out what the maximum IOPS and throughput is for LSI SAS 9207-8i or LSI SAS 9300-8i with IR hardware RAID 0. I know using this with HBA style software raid the card will provide the performance. I just do not know the inner workings of the IR hardware RAID 0. Has anyone done any testing similar to this?

To answer your question Random IOPS, Windows 8 or 2012. Has anyone done any benchmarks between Megaraid fastpath and HBA IR hardware RAID 0?
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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Hmm I don't have any raid-0 setup however it is ideal for fast path (Raid-0).

All my junk is raid-1 now with span since I need to run maximum concurrency without write-back caching.
 

stenrulz

New Member
Aug 20, 2012
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Yea I know it is desgin for raid 0 but how does it compare to IR hardware raid 0? As the fusion-MPT has some very nice IOPS at lest for HBA mode not sure for hardware raid. Hopefully someone on here has done some testing before :)