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Slow Performance with a S130
Hi, Just taken delivery of a PowerEdge R630 which has a Perc S130 RAID card with 4*250Gb 7200 RPM SATA disks in a RAID5 array and we're experiencing unexpected slow performance.
Using CrystalMark, the max Read speed we're seeing is 12MB/s, with write as 7MB/s. I know it's software raid, but I was expecting a bit more performance than that.
The latest drivers were taken from the dell web site (4.0.0.37) and looking back, the windows server install took a lot longer than usual.
I know it's soft raid, rather than hardware accelerated raid, but I would have expected the performance to be significantly better than it is (I have a NAS here with software raid providing 90MB/s read/write with just an Atom CPU, Not 2*Xeon E5-2620 v3.
Many thanks.
pcmeiners
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1.8K Posts
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September 5th, 2015 11:00
"No, the S-series controllers are garbage. My recommendation is that if you care enough about its performance to ever even consider running a benchmark, then don't use it."
Agree this controller is useless, Dell should cease using these low end devices ( notice I did not call it a raid).
Now all you users can spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the issue , wait for a possible solution ( long and unlikely, as it was broken to start) or you can buy a real hardware raid. Personally I inherited a couple clients with low end devices, and did not waste any time, I just purchased real hardware raid controllers. Being arrogant/angry at Dell is not getting your raid subsystems up to par , Hey if you order a Porsche with a VW Beatle engine don't expect it to win races.
roderickfischer
8 Posts
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September 28th, 2015 01:00
We've upgraded the server with a PERC H330 Integrated RAID Controller. Read speeds are now normal (above 100Mb/s) and we can finally take the server into production. Lessons learned. Never buy a software RAID from Dell :-)
theflash1932
7 Technologist
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16.3K Posts
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August 24th, 2015 09:00
No, the S-series controllers are garbage. My recommendation is that if you care enough about its performance to ever even consider running a benchmark, then don't use it. Use OS-managed or hardware RAID - even the low-end hardware RAID will be preferable. From what I hear, RAID 1 isn't horrible, but RAID 5 is the biggest loser when it comes to performance.
roderickfischer
8 Posts
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September 3rd, 2015 02:00
Hi there,
We experience the same problem with the same hardware. A brand new PowerEdge R630 with a PERC S130 RAID. We use a RAID-1 configuration. Write speeds are good, but read speeds are terrible. Around 10MB/s.
We have other Dell servers with software RAID (PERC S100) and never had these problems before. It looks like there is something wrong with the S130. It is slow out of the box. We have installed the most recent firmware and drivers, but no difference. Hopefully Dell will address this problem.
Did you contact Dell support about this problem? Do you have any updates?
roderickfischer
8 Posts
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September 3rd, 2015 02:00
We have the same problem with the support by phone. They let you do all the things we've already checked and verified (run diagnostics, update drivers, etc.). In this case there is definitely something wrong and Dell should investigate and fix it (I have the hope this is a fixable software bug).
In our case the OS (windows 2012 R2) was pre-installed and the read performance was bad right out of the box (before we did install anything on it). The fact that you are experiencing the same problem with the same hardware setup would suggest that this is a reproducible problem with the PowerEdge R630 in combination with the S130.
We've spent nearly EUR 6000,- on a new server which read performance is worst than the read performance of the old server we are planning to replace (a 10 years old PowerEdge 2850). I don't like that...
Hopefully a Dell employee notifies this thread and is able to help us and elevate the problem to a technical team. I will submit a new thread with a link to this one, to gain attention... Let's keep each other informed on any updates.
SiPurdy
2 Posts
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September 3rd, 2015 02:00
Not contacted Dell, was hopeful that they actually monitored the forums, hate logging support through phone calls, especially when its technical, and I've done some prep work.
Its a shame that the performance on RAID1 is not much better, was thinking about migrating over to RAID-10 to see if that improved matters, but as it's still slow on RAID-1, there might not be the point.
Other option is to add a hardware RAID card as an after purchase addin.
roderickfischer
8 Posts
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September 3rd, 2015 03:00
We have a brand new PowerEdge R630 with a PERC S130 RAID in a RAID-1 configuration. The system has terrible read speeds. Around 10MB/s max. The OS (Windows Server 2012 R2) was factory installed, but the system was slow out of the box. We've updated all firmware and drivers to the most recent version (4.0.0-0037), but the problem persists.
There are other customers with the same hardware setup who experience the same problem. See this thread:
commweb-ps3.us.dell.com/.../20817104
I'm trying to collect more customers with the same problem. We think this a software bug or hardware fault which should be investigated by Dell. In our case we bought a EUR 6000,- machine with a read performance worst than the read performance of the old server we are planning to replace (a 10 years old PowerEdge 2850).
We never had these problems with other Dell servers. I know the S130 is a software RAID, but we have plenty servers with earlier versions of this RAID solution (like the PERC S100) and they perform fine.
ken_nishimura_k
4 Posts
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November 19th, 2015 09:00
I assume this migration was done without data loss? Can you explain the steps taken to migrate from S130 to H330?
roderickfischer
8 Posts
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November 20th, 2015 02:00
Unfortunately not. We've had to rebuild the RAID and do a complete OS reinstall. It took quite some time to get everything up and running. Also the new RAID card was delivered without the necessary cables (Dell thought the right cable was already in the server which was not the case :-(). So we've planned a datacenter visit only to find out the right cable was missing. Contact Dell again, wait for the right cable. Back to the datacenter again and fit the hardware and reinstall OS and applications. Now everything is running very well. Bottom line: Dell should stop selling software RAIDS!
roderickfischer
8 Posts
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November 20th, 2015 03:00
Steps to migrate:
1. Remove cables;
2. Install H330 card;
3. Install new cables;
4. Do a complete OS reinstall using Dell Lifecycle Controller.
georgewillow
1 Message
0
January 31st, 2016 12:00
Any update on this? Just got a brand new R230 with same RAID 1 read performance issues. Clearly there must be something wrong. Write performance is fine. While the S130 might not be what you want for RAID 5, RAID 1 should be easy to handle.
laser_agg
1 Message
0
February 2nd, 2016 08:00
same problem with a new PowerEdge R730 with S130 "software RAID" - extremely poor performance, right out of the box. The SW RAID appears to hide the CPU and I/O utilization from the windows performance monitor - everything looks good there, but the thing is worthless. Tech Support helped us through all kinds of updates - nothing doing.
DELL should not be selling the S130 software RAID.
a.holovchenko
3 Posts
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April 16th, 2016 06:00
The same problem with new PE R230 and builtin s130
pcmeiners
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1.8K Posts
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April 16th, 2016 15:00
Seriously folks do you expect the S130 to mutate into a true raid? The S130 or any low raid is not going to recover, it has systemic ills beyond help, think of it as a hospice candidate.
Your mantra should be.....
Do not purchase a machine with a low end raid controller under ANY circumstance !!!!!!!
As to migrating from a lowly controller to a high end controller, there are few instances whereby you need to rebuild from scratch. You can clone or create an image under most circumstances, then restore to the new controllers array. Personally I have posted the procedure umpteen times, so unless you enjoy rebuilding from scratch, I would search for the procedure.
roderickfischer
8 Posts
1
April 17th, 2016 04:00
If you need high performance disk I/O you should definitely buy a hardware raid. Totally agree on that one! But I think there is really something wrong with the S130. In our case we use these kind of servers in a web farm for just in memory processing of data. So we don't need high speed disk I/O (we have enough RAM in there, so the disk is just used for booting the OS). It looks like there is some kind of defect in the S130. We have lot's of other servers with S100 RAID's and they perform fine for our purpose. The S130 on the other hand delivers very bad read speeds of 10Mb/s max. Even a cheap computer can do better than that. The system is slow right out the box. Dell should note in the order procedure that the S130 is 15 times slower than their previous S100 software RAID. Customers need to be informed they are spending money on a server which will be completely useless because it can't even start the OS in a normal timely fashion.
So, I'm absolutely not expecting the S130 will be a good RAID solution for I/O intensive applications. But I was expecting some normal I/O throughput just like it's S100 predecessor did.