[help] slow ultra320 SCSI performance

[k2_1971]

I recently aquired an HP proliant DL360 G3 rackmount server. It has a pair of 72GB ultra320 SCSI hard drives (10k rpm) w/ the optional write cache card installed to boost performance. The controller these run thru is an HP smart array 5i. The OS is w2k3 SP1, and I have the latest drivers from HP installed for all the hardware concerned.

Here's the deal - I have these drives striped in a RAID 0 cfg, 16k cluster size. I ran the latest sisoft sandra benchmark on the drives, and while the performance is much faster than my desktop setup (62.8MB/sec) it's very slow compared to other systems tested with the same kind of setup - it's only about half as fast as it should be. In sisofts tips section, it mentioned turning off 'write verify' - easy enough eh? I cant find anywhere in the OS, the HP drive utility, or in the smart array's bios setup on where to turn off write verify for the drives, or even anything remotely close to it.

If any of you have experience with this line of servers and/or array controllers, I could sure use some advice, get me pointed in the right direction. Thx in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[Lazn_Work]

Actually it would not be a bad idea to call HP (they have great support) about this.

Sometimes one of the drives could be causing a "silent" error on these servers that only gets logged if you are looking for it with HP's software for this purpose. My roomate just went through this on a DL380, terrible drive performance.. well one of the drives was basically resetting the SCSI bus nonstop, so it was not able to get up to speed. He rebuilt to the hotspare and got that drive replaced and it took care of most of the problem.. A faster RAID controller was needed to get the speed he needed though. (I forget which he had to upgrade to/from but the drive was only part of the problem)

==>Lazn