Thanks to my buddy Tex I have joined the SCSI elite with two x 18 GB ATLAS 10K III RAID 0 and a 9gb for page and temp files....all on a MegaRaid 1600 controller with 128 MB of RAM.
Did I get that right Tex?
Anyway...it's XP and after my first few weeks with SCSI...I have to say the main thing I notice is how those "sharp corners" of the OS are rounded off. Things just open and close "smoother" and many apps can run a little easier. It may not be 4000 percent faster...but I like it.
Now to figure out what to tweak where to bump those scores up.
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited July 2003
MM... your atto scores in SCSI are still much better than mine were Trust me tho... IDE or SCSI, when you're pushing 100mb/s+ (or even 60-70mb/s+), it's noticeably faster than a single drive system... my biggest complaint with SCSI and RAID is the stupid boot times...
MediaMan said Thanks to my buddy Tex I have joined the SCSI elite with two x 18 GB ATLAS 10K III RAID 0 and a 9gb for page and temp files....all on a MegaRaid 1600 controller with 128 MB of RAM.
Did I get that right Tex?
Anyway...it's XP and after my first few weeks with SCSI...I have to say the main thing I notice is how those "sharp corners" of the OS are rounded off. Things just open and close "smoother" and many apps can run a little easier. It may not be 4000 percent faster...but I like it.
Now to figure out what to tweak where to bump those scores up.
Smooth is the way I try to describe the differance with dually's and scsi in general really. I think its the best way I have come up with to describe the feeling anyway.
Geeky1 said my biggest complaint with SCSI and RAID is the stupid boot times...
I have to admit that the boot time is longer. I have to wait for the SCSI controller to do its thing then the onboard Promise controller to do its thing (as I have an IDE drive hooked up too).
From dead cold to desktop the whole process takes approximately 1:30. It never bothers me though...I walk into the MM labs...hit the big GO button...walk out...get a drink or use the bathroom...harrass the cat...when I come back I'm up and running.
But you are right...if you had to be up and running in 10 seconds...not going to happen.
All in all I'm glad that Tex hooked me up. It just has made the whole desktop experience a much more enjoyable and "smoother" place to be.
Two or 4 channel? With 6 killer drives you can saturate two channels.
If you have only two channels put three on each and try a 64k stripe with raid-0. The optimum settings for your ontroller on how you set the caching and stuff can't really be guessed like this though as each controller is differant and they all tweak a little differant.
Tex
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Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited July 2003
RAID 0... what stripe size is best is debateable; I just used the default 64k for mine. Maybe someone else can suggest an optimal stripe size.
Anyhow, RAID 0 is the best for maximum performance. The issue is, of course, if any one of those 6 drives dies, ALL of your data dies. RAID 0+1 (striping mirrored arrays) or 1+0 (mirroring striped arrays) (at least I think that's how those work...) should provide better data security without much speed loss...
But rhino your maxing out a two channel card . 266 is about what mine will do maxed out and I bet yorus is close to that. With a 4 channel you can double that especialy caus eyour running pci-x right?
All the drives are on one channel, and I don't really want to try and remove the server from the rack to change it.
I think it's PCI-X.
The drive only has a fresh install of win2k.
But the cache on that thing is really bluring reailty with atto.
You really need to run iometer to test a scsi rig like that. I was going to write and article about the differances ikn testing a scsi raid rig like ours and why you had to use IOmeter to really bench it in a server environment.
IOmeter is what we used in the lab. You can set "number of workers" and attempt to set differant io patterns based on what they do... and it simulates differant load levels and stuff.
Comments
Did I get that right Tex?
Anyway...it's XP and after my first few weeks with SCSI...I have to say the main thing I notice is how those "sharp corners" of the OS are rounded off. Things just open and close "smoother" and many apps can run a little easier. It may not be 4000 percent faster...but I like it.
Now to figure out what to tweak where to bump those scores up.
Smooth is the way I try to describe the differance with dually's and scsi in general really. I think its the best way I have come up with to describe the feeling anyway.
Tex
I have to admit that the boot time is longer. I have to wait for the SCSI controller to do its thing then the onboard Promise controller to do its thing (as I have an IDE drive hooked up too).
From dead cold to desktop the whole process takes approximately 1:30. It never bothers me though...I walk into the MM labs...hit the big GO button...walk out...get a drink or use the bathroom...harrass the cat...when I come back I'm up and running.
But you are right...if you had to be up and running in 10 seconds...not going to happen.
All in all I'm glad that Tex hooked me up. It just has made the whole desktop experience a much more enjoyable and "smoother" place to be.
For best performance, how should I set them up in the RAID controller?
If you have only two channels put three on each and try a 64k stripe with raid-0. The optimum settings for your ontroller on how you set the caching and stuff can't really be guessed like this though as each controller is differant and they all tweak a little differant.
Tex
Anyhow, RAID 0 is the best for maximum performance. The issue is, of course, if any one of those 6 drives dies, ALL of your data dies. RAID 0+1 (striping mirrored arrays) or 1+0 (mirroring striped arrays) (at least I think that's how those work...) should provide better data security without much speed loss...
Tex
There is next to no performance over my last benchmark.
Tex
Tex
I think it's PCI-X.
The drive only has a fresh install of win2k.
But the cache on that thing is really bluring reailty with atto.
You really need to run iometer to test a scsi rig like that. I was going to write and article about the differances ikn testing a scsi raid rig like ours and why you had to use IOmeter to really bench it in a server environment.
Cheers Buddy !
Tex
Tex
Tex