Personal computing discussed

Moderators: renee, JustAnEngineer

 
frumper15
Gerbil XP
Topic Author
Posts: 380
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2010 3:25 pm

Re: New Server for Small Business

Fri Jul 12, 2013 5:04 pm

So I went back and tested the PERC 5/i in CrystalDiskMark using the 100MB test size (I had been using the 1GB size) and the results were vastly different.

RAID5
Sequential Read : 753.755 MB/s
Sequential Write : 714.859 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 718.944 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 654.487 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 74.223 MB/s [ 18120.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 64.773 MB/s [ 15813.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 145.747 MB/s [ 35582.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 139.644 MB/s [ 34092.8 IOPS]

RAID0
Sequential Read : 784.340 MB/s
Sequential Write : 732.173 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 706.846 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 680.394 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 56.651 MB/s [ 13830.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 56.779 MB/s [ 13862.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 149.119 MB/s [ 36406.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 137.637 MB/s [ 33602.7 IOPS]

Hmm...I thought to myself - that seems like phenomenal performance, but what does it mean for me? I tried the only thing I really could do with what i had on hand - I dropped a few larger files (1-4GB in size) in a folder on the desktop and copied them. I got 200MB/s which isn't horrible, but it's not much faster than a single drive doing the same thing and it's certainly no 700MB/s achievement either. I can say that staying with files smaller than the cache certainly makes a big difference, but I've gotten much better copy results when messing around with the other RAID card (that I will try to test with this weekend if at all possible).

In other news, I thought I would post a few pictures of the server that we've got running
Image
You can see my slight modification to get the SSDs mounted in the factory sleds - works pretty well if you ask me.
Image
i7-8086K | Z370 AORUS GAMING WIFI | 32GB DDR4-2400 | EVGA GTX 1080 Ti | 512GB 960 Pro | 27" Dell 2560x1440 Gsync | Fractal R6 | Seasonic Focus Plus 850W | Win10 Pro x64.
 
frumper15
Gerbil XP
Topic Author
Posts: 380
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2010 3:25 pm

Re: New Server for Small Business

Sat Jul 13, 2013 11:57 am

I kludged together the other PCIX raid card I had and scrounged enough sata power connectors to get the 4 ssds powered and run some tests. The other card is a 3ware/AMCC 9550SX that I have from another old server (hence the pcix). Amazingly I found a W7 64 bit driver that let me install to the array. I put together a RAID0 and RAID5 array, making sure write-back is on (no BBU, but this is just testing, right).
First, RAID0 Results:
  1. 1GB test:

    Sequential Read : 579.804 MB/s
    Sequential Write : 438.551 MB/s
    Random Read 512KB : 472.504 MB/s
    Random Write 512KB : 411.617 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 19.721 MB/s [ 4814.6 IOPS]
    Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 31.881 MB/s [ 7783.5 IOPS]
    Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 62.885 MB/s [ 15352.8 IOPS]
    Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 45.175 MB/s [ 11029.1 IOPS]

    Test : 1000 MB [C: 3.2% (14.3/446.9 GB)] (x1)
  2. 100MB test

    Sequential Read : 584.452 MB/s
    Sequential Write : 475.853 MB/s
    Random Read 512KB : 477.814 MB/s
    Random Write 512KB : 361.278 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 21.316 MB/s [ 5204.1 IOPS]
    Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 33.857 MB/s [ 8265.8 IOPS]
    Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 64.205 MB/s [ 15675.0 IOPS]
    Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 43.599 MB/s [ 10644.3 IOPS]

    Test : 100 MB [C: 3.2% (14.3/446.9 GB)] (x1)

Then, RAID5
  1. 1GB test size
    Sequential Read : 508.277 MB/s
    Sequential Write : 294.668 MB/s
    Random Read 512KB : 441.267 MB/s
    Random Write 512KB : 47.794 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 19.622 MB/s [ 4790.4 IOPS]
    Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 11.858 MB/s [ 2895.1 IOPS]
    Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 61.696 MB/s [ 15062.4 IOPS]
    Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 11.597 MB/s [ 2831.3 IOPS]

    Test : 1000 MB [C: 4.3% (14.3/335.1 GB)] (x1)
  2. and 100mb test
    Sequential Read : 513.086 MB/s
    Sequential Write : 292.370 MB/s
    Random Read 512KB : 422.011 MB/s
    Random Write 512KB : 59.165 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 20.140 MB/s [ 4916.9 IOPS]
    Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 11.370 MB/s [ 2775.9 IOPS]
    Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 62.714 MB/s [ 15311.1 IOPS]
    Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 12.149 MB/s [ 2966.1 IOPS]

Interestingly, this card has nearly identical results for the 1GB and 100mb test sizes vs. the PERC 5/i that appears to use its cache to much greater effect, but falls off dramatically at sizes larger than. The 9550, in contrast, has nearly 4x the sequential write performance in what I'm pretty sure is a slower interface (pcix vs. pcie) with the same drives.

While this has been a fun experiment for me, my hope is someone else finds this useful as these cards will likely live out the remainder of their days gathering dust since I don't really have much of a use for them at home or work.

I found this little tidbit on the Amazon product listing for the 9550 and I thought I would share it.

amazon product listing wrote:
The 3ware 9550SX PCI-X to SATA II RAID controller delivers over 800MB/sec RAID 5 reads (nope) and exceeds 380MB/sec RAID 5 (yep)
i7-8086K | Z370 AORUS GAMING WIFI | 32GB DDR4-2400 | EVGA GTX 1080 Ti | 512GB 960 Pro | 27" Dell 2560x1440 Gsync | Fractal R6 | Seasonic Focus Plus 850W | Win10 Pro x64.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest
GZIP: On