[ILUG] Dell PERCs and Linux

[Paul Jakma]

On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, David Murphy wrote:

> You can have something that's relatively (fast, safe, cheap), pick any
> two. RAID5 is relatively safe and cheap. It's not relatively fast.

ok... here's a benchmark:

              -------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
              -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
Machine    MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU /sec %CPU
          400  1798 87.1  5384 11.0  3188 15.9  1582 85.2 14076 25.0 181.2  4.1

this is on a 200MHz K6 machine, 128MB RAM, old DAC960-PDU controller
(25MHz i960CF, 4MB RAM, 3x NCR 53c870 embedded uw scsi controller -
ie one of of the early UW controllers). 64KB stripe, 8KB chunks,

Disks:

    1:1  Vendor: SEAGATE   Model: ST19101W          Revision: 0014
         Serial Number: LH029980
         Disk Status: Online, 17782784 blocks
    2:0  Vendor: SEAGATE   Model: ST39175LW         Revision: 0001
         Serial Number: 3AL0NQVW000070110HXK
         Disk Status: Online, 17782784 blocks
    2:4  Vendor: SEAGATE   Model: ST39175LW         Revision: 0001
         Serial Number: 3AL1124F000070202J68
         Disk Status: Online, 17782784 blocks

ie 1 disk on channel 1, 2 disks on channel 2.

System was fully up, running squid, sendmail, fetchmail, etc.. at the
time of benchmark. And it still gets 14MB/s read performance!! write
performance is a lot slower @ 5.3MB/s - probably lack of cpu/cache
ram - but hey it's an old controller.

i'll try to get a bench on a newer Compaq SMART card at some point
soon. Looking at the specs for ExtremeRAID's: the base 1100's have
StrongARM's @ 233MHz!!! wow.... anyone have one of these to run a
bonnie on? (Dave Rynne)

-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie
PGP5 key: http://www.clubi.ie/jakma/publickey.txt
-------------------------------------------
Fortune:
Between infinite and short there is a big difference.
		-- G.H. Gonnet