3ware Controller - Few issues

N

nry

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2008
Messages
409
Iv never setup a RAID array before, and finally had a decent budget to work with so went out and bought some disks

Please bare with me as I am unsure on some of the terms etc around all this but learn quickly so should be able to understand most things hopfuly lol

My full spec is currently:

MOBO: Asus P8B-WS
CPU: Xeon E3-1245
RAM: 4x 4GB Corsair Vengance DDR3
OS Disk: 4GB Kingston USB
RAID: 3ware 9690SA-8I
Expander: Chenbro SASX36
HDD: 8x Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 (3TB 5400rpm)
Host OS: ESXi 5
Guest OS (3ware card passed onto this OS, this seems to work perfectly): Ubuntu x64 10.04.3 Server
3DM2 Version: 2.11.00.019
API version: 2.08.00.023
Controller firmware: FH9X 4.10.00.024
Controller Driver: 2.26.02.012


1) My first issue is that I cant access the 3DM2 web interface from my laptop, I can get the SSL invalid request then it goes to a error 'The connection was reset', when the host is down it says 'Unable to connect' so something isnt quite right there, but I can access it from another VM (Windows 7 x64) on the same host, annoying issue but I can work round it I guess

2) My expander connects to the controller with a standard 8087 cable, so im assuming thats 4 ports (is that the correct term?) connecting the controller to the expander
But when I go into the 'Controller Phy Summary'
Only Phy 6 and 7 are showing as having links (total of 8)
Should I expect to see 4 links here?

3) Im using a SAS backplane (http://www.xcase.co.uk/x-case-home-server-box-p/case-homeserver24.htm) and have the 8 drives in the top 8 bays.

I am assuming the port config goes from left to right, top down
11, 10, 9, 8
15, 14, 13, 12

All drives appear to be on, indicator on the front of the backplane

But only 4 show up on 3DM2 (I did have 6 at one point, but somehow they vanished?)

This is what I have displayed...

screenshot20120311at224.png


Where are my other 4 drives?
 
1. Can you see the drives if you enter the bios utility?
2. How are the backplanes powered?
3. Have you tried different backplanes/disks in slots?
 
1) In the 3DM2 Settings, do you have "Allow Remote Acess" enabled?

2) Each port refers to a connected drive. With that card you can have up to 128 ports IIRC. Ports numbered 8+ are virtual ports, for drives connected thru an expander. Ports 0-7 are reserved for drives connected directly to the controller phys. Phys are the actual physical links on the 9690. Each miniSAS connector on the 9690 supports 4 phys. A single miniSAS cable connected to an expander should use 4 phys no matter how many drives are connected to the expander. You might have a bad or loose cable. Try replacing your miniSAS cable, also try using the other miniSAS connecter on the 9690.

3) Only connected drives will be assigned ports by the 3ware card, in sequence, order depending on how the backplane is cabled to the expander. Empty bays will be skipped.
 
3b) I just realized you're talking slot numbers on 3), not ports. Try setting the firmware jumper on the chenbro. You will lose the slot numbering, but your problem could be related to enclosure support.
 
Thanks for the input, will have a play later and see what I can do
 
I see in the bios exacley what I see in 3dm2

Backplane is powered by a 650w corsair connected via a single molex, each backplane panel has its own power connector for 4 drives

I just moved all the drives down in the case, 7 of 8 now show up, so wondering if this is an issue with the backplane/enclosure or cables

And yes remote access is enabled, I have moved to port 80 to test, and no difference, inside my Win 7 VM which im accessing this from IE8 works perfectly but chrome just sits there loading after accepting the invalid certificate, IE working over chrome, first time for everything I guess!
 
This is also what I reffered to in my first post where the expander appears to be only connected via 2 lanes?

screenshot20120312at195.png


Sorry if i appear to be a complete idiot, im not, honest! lol
 
Right changed the cable between controller and expander

Had all 4 links at 3Gbps.

All 8 drives showed up (they were in the 8 slots not used the first time), all appeared ok.

Created a RAID6 unit, and two of the drives became degraded within 30 mins. Oh man this seems like hard work!
 
nry said:
I see in the bios exacley what I see in 3dm2

Backplane is powered by a 650w corsair connected via a single molex, each backplane panel has its own power connector for 4 drives
Click to expand...

Are you using the same cable for all of the backplanes? I'd suggest powering no more than 2 backplanes from each connector. I had random drop issues when I tried to use the 1-7 splitter for all 6 backplanes :)
 
Only 8 drives installed, all powered over one cable. Should be enough shouldnt it?
 
I got my BBU working, after updating the firmware in finally boots with the BBU attached!

My biggest pet hate making this whole process 10x harder is not being able to access the 3dm2 web console.

Basically it only works in IE8 (may work in other IE versions)

Just a break down of what happens when I access https://192.168.1.31:88 (file server)

Windows 7 (IE8) VM on ESXi: works perfectly
Windows 7 (Chrome) VM on ESXi: The site's security certificate is not trusted! message
- press proceed anyway and page just says wating for 192.168.1.31...

Mac (Firefox) Laptop: Untrusted certificate error, add exception, then get 'The connection was reset'
Mac (Chrome) Laptop: The site's security certificate is not trusted! message
- press proceed anyway and page just says wating for 192.168.1.31...
Mac (IE8) Laptop (Windows 7 VM): works perfectly
Mac (Chrome) Laptop (Windows 7 VM): The site's security certificate is not trusted! message
- press proceed anyway and page just says wating for 192.168.1.31...


So I am assuming this is a SSL issue somehow, anyone got any recommendations on how to sort this?
 
Plugged one of the backplanes into directly into the controller

2/4 slots seem to work

Did some hdparm tests (all in MB/s)

Single disk direct 117 116 115
Single disk direct 129 131 130
direct raid 0 193 238 231
direct raid1 156 165 169

Through the expander I seem to get 20MB/s max, hmm going to keep investigating!
 
So flooding this thread with crap now....

I have produced a little chart for benchmarking everything...
screenshot20120323at002.png


As you can see if I go through the expander the performance is shite

Assuming max throughput of the card is about 450MB/s which I guess I can live with, did want to see about 600 on raid6 but guess you cant have everything!

I have narrowed down the problem to the expander, there is a firmware jumper on it for returning to the original have tried that too

But im all out of ideas, cant see any firmware upgrades for the expander, besides switching to another expander or other controller im stuck on this one!
 
One more....

4 drives through expander, using breakout sas cable, in raid 0

This shows some improvement but assuming this is caching somewhere, either way its still not as good as a driect connection

screenshot20120323at004.png
 
Think iv about given up on this expander.

I dont know if I should go for a HP expander or try a different controller

Or maybe go for 2 separate controllers, fairly happy with the performance of the controller with direct connections
 
Something is surely wrong... with the same card and expander I get 300-400MB/s reads.
 
As far as the SSL bug, try an older version of Firefox. 7.0 works for me, anything higher refuses to load.
 
What firmware are you using?

Pulling my hair out over this!
 
This looks very similar to my issue.

Theres an issue with this expander when it comes to SATA 6Gb/s drives, instead of them falling back to 3Gb/s like they should, they fallback to 1.5Gb/s.... I had nothing but problems with drives falling off or going degraded moments after booting up when they are running in 1.5Gb/s. Just check the speeds of your individual drives to see if its the case. I tested some standard SATA 3Gb/s drives and those linked up at 3Gb/s and worked great.

The only fix I could work out was setting the 9690SA to 1.5Gbps for all lanes and jumpering the SATA 6Gb/s drives down to 1.5Gbps... (luckily my Barracuda XT's allow this). The drives no longer fell off and its stable. Simply jumpering the drives alone to 1.5Gb/s did not work, the controller's 4 lane 8087 needed to be at 1.5Gb/s too.

The proper solution is probably a firmware upgrade for the LSISASX36 chipset. My expander is in my Supermicro SC846-E1 backplane, but the Norco's chip is identical. Seems neither company readily provides the SEP firmware, least Supermicro support ignored my support request entirely....
 
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