LSI 9211-8i performance - regular HDD & SSD

[pstoianov]

Hello all,

I'm sure that many guys like me are going to upgrade to 6 Gb/s SATA-3/SAS-2.0 and looking at LSI 9211 or similar, and googling about the performance and issues of these HBAs...
LSI 921xx controller has no dedicated RAM or cache and looks pretty basic card IMO but has good price...
So, can you post your experience with LSI's 921X running RAID with SSDs or regular HDDs?

 

[PigLover]

9211-8i is Raid 0/1 only. No Raid-5. Therefore lack of cache is not generally considered a significant issue. There are lots of threads here on this card (and its OEM variants). Most users of this card really count on it for HBA-only with various software storage architectures (ZFS, etc).

Also, for SSD, you probably want cards based on newer chipsets and/or with PCIe 3.0 connectivity (LSI SAS 2308 based cards).

Start here for a complete look at the LSI-based option: http://forums.servethehome.com/raid...ler-hba-complete-listing-plus-oem-models.html. Once you get more of an idea what you are looking for (Raid 5? Raid 0? Etc.) you can have a meaningful discussion of how to benchmark and/or experiences.

 

[PigLover]

See here http://forums.servethehome.com/raid-controllers-host-bus-adapters/433-ibm-m1015-experiences.html for info on the IBM M1015 and specific experiences. IBM M1015 is essentially an LSI 9240-8i (like the 9211, cache-less, but the 'real' 9240-8i has Raid-5). You can flash the 9211 firmware onto this card and - functionally - it is exactly identical to the 9211. All of the experience listed here applies pretty directly to the 9211. You can also run it as a 9240 but you have to get a special "key" to activate Raid5.

Lastly, see here http://forums.servethehome.com/raid-controllers-host-bus-adapters/433-ibm-m1015-experiences.html for a similar thread on the IBM5015. Same story, but this time related card is LSI 9260-8i. Raid 5/6 with cache.

Generally speaking, the OEM versions of the LSI cards (IBM M1015/M5015 and various Dell, etc, options too) are widely available at good prices on eBay. You should really explore these options before you buy. Unless you really need the LSI branded version the OEMs are much better deals.

 

[dba]

Hello all,

I'm sure that many guys like me are going to upgrade to 6 Gb/s SATA-3/SAS-2.0 and looking at LSI 9211 or similar, and googling about the performance and issues of these HBAs...
LSI 921xx controller has no dedicated RAM or cache and looks pretty basic card IMO but has good price...
So, can you post your experience with LSI's 921X running RAID with SSDs or regular HDDs?

The LSI SAS2008 cards like the 9211 max out at about 3,200MB/s and 350K IOPS with SSD drives, limited by the PCIe2 bus. The LSI SAS2308 and SAS3008 based cards can do even better, but only in servers with PCIe3 slots.

 

[pstoianov]

Thanks for the answers!
I mean how LSI 921x is handling RAID0 or RAID1.
For RAID5(0) / 6(0), I personally prefer 926x/927x/928x as many math and calculation there...

Is there any performance benefits to flash 9211 to 9240 for RAID0, 1 or 10?

I also hear some rumors about terrible performance with SSD in RAID-1 but @dba is saying that bottleneck is "3,200MB/s and 350K IOPS"...which is perfect for such cards...

 

[dba]

Thanks for the answers!
I mean how LSI 921x is handling RAID0 or RAID1.
For RAID5(0) / 6(0), I personally prefer 926x/927x/928x as many math and calculation there...

Is there any performance benefits to flash 9211 to 9240 for RAID0, 1 or 10?

I also hear some rumors about terrible performance with SSD in RAID-1 but @dba is saying that bottleneck is "3,200MB/s and 350K IOPS"...which is perfect for such cards...

I normally use these as HBAs as opposed to RAID cards, so interpret my numbers accordingly. I have run them as RAID0/RAID1/RAID1E/RAID10 as well, focusing on highly threaded read-oriented use cases, but I did not run any detailed benchmarks since I need more drives than can connect to a single card, forcing me to use software RAID. I can tell you that a mirrored pair of SSD drives will give you slightly lower write performance than a single drive, and nearly double the read performance when there are multiple readers.