Happy New Year to all.
Someone gave me an older (2006) Xyratex RS-1603 SAS/SATA enclosure with 16-bays. I put 8 Hitachi SATA2 drives into it, connected it to an LSI 8888ELP RAID adapter, and configured it for RAID0 (128K, Write Through, Read Ahead). I am not concerned about redundancy - only speed, and then capacity. These settings are what I have typically used, and LSI recommends them in cases where large files (100s of GBs) will be accessed sequentially.
The results for sequential read and write is just under 500 MB/s. What you would expect from 4 drives in a synthetic benchmark. The drives individually are capable of about 130 MB/s. In the product literature it says the RS-1603 is capable of 1200 MB/s (4 aggregated 3Gb SAS lanes -4x3Gb SAS lanes- per port. It has two 4-lane 3Gb SAS ports per controller (EBOD) and I have two controllers.
In reality, I think I should be able to get about 900-1000 MB/s.
But even though there are 2 ports each on the two controllers, it appears to me that the 2nd port on each controller is only for expansion to another enclosure (as shown in the install manual and is called EXP), and the second controller is just for redundancy. The main port is called HOST.
When I tried to connect a cable to the HOST port on the 2nd controller, the LSI adapter just hangs and is not recognized. I even tried connecting a second cable to EXP port on first controller, but it had no effect.
So the results I posted above are for 8 drives accessed from the HOST port on only one controller.
I was hoping that this enclosure would allow me to address the first 8 drives from one cable out of my LSI adapter, and the second 8 drives from the second cable out of my LSI adapter. But that doesn't appear to be the case. It seems all 16 drives are accessed in one enclosure through a single cable.
When I added another 4 drives for a total of 12, I still get the less than 500 MB/s results. I am not sure what I don't understand and doing wrong, since I can't even get close to 1000 MB/s. There is nothing really to configure on the enclosure and the manual has virtually nothing useful in it.
This enclosure was widely used in Dell's, EMC's, etc. so perhaps someone out there can point me in the direction to solve this issue. I am not an Enterprise hardware guy, so perhaps I am just missing something conceptually.
Someone gave me an older (2006) Xyratex RS-1603 SAS/SATA enclosure with 16-bays. I put 8 Hitachi SATA2 drives into it, connected it to an LSI 8888ELP RAID adapter, and configured it for RAID0 (128K, Write Through, Read Ahead). I am not concerned about redundancy - only speed, and then capacity. These settings are what I have typically used, and LSI recommends them in cases where large files (100s of GBs) will be accessed sequentially.
The results for sequential read and write is just under 500 MB/s. What you would expect from 4 drives in a synthetic benchmark. The drives individually are capable of about 130 MB/s. In the product literature it says the RS-1603 is capable of 1200 MB/s (4 aggregated 3Gb SAS lanes -4x3Gb SAS lanes- per port. It has two 4-lane 3Gb SAS ports per controller (EBOD) and I have two controllers.
In reality, I think I should be able to get about 900-1000 MB/s.
But even though there are 2 ports each on the two controllers, it appears to me that the 2nd port on each controller is only for expansion to another enclosure (as shown in the install manual and is called EXP), and the second controller is just for redundancy. The main port is called HOST.
When I tried to connect a cable to the HOST port on the 2nd controller, the LSI adapter just hangs and is not recognized. I even tried connecting a second cable to EXP port on first controller, but it had no effect.
So the results I posted above are for 8 drives accessed from the HOST port on only one controller.
I was hoping that this enclosure would allow me to address the first 8 drives from one cable out of my LSI adapter, and the second 8 drives from the second cable out of my LSI adapter. But that doesn't appear to be the case. It seems all 16 drives are accessed in one enclosure through a single cable.
When I added another 4 drives for a total of 12, I still get the less than 500 MB/s results. I am not sure what I don't understand and doing wrong, since I can't even get close to 1000 MB/s. There is nothing really to configure on the enclosure and the manual has virtually nothing useful in it.
This enclosure was widely used in Dell's, EMC's, etc. so perhaps someone out there can point me in the direction to solve this issue. I am not an Enterprise hardware guy, so perhaps I am just missing something conceptually.
