Highpoint 2320 rocketraid RAID5

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cadabra

n00b
Joined
Jan 22, 2008
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Hello Everyone,

I have a rocketraid 2320 with 8 750 gig drives. (Replaced 320's.) Now that I'm above winxp's 2 tb limit, I need to use another OS to serve my files. (Windows and MacOS machines.)

Does anyone have recomendations? I tried FreeNAS and ClarkConnect, but neither had the drivers for the 2320. (If you have them, please let me know!)

Thanks,

John
 
Have you considered a 64bit version of Windows? I don't think the 2TB applies there.

Of course I've heard great things about freenas but I've never tried it.
 
actually freenas has drivers for rocketraid 2320 built in, i run freenas as my file server os with 8 segates 500 on 2320, it worked right out of the "box"
 
Looks like one of the larger linux distros (like Ubuntu or Fedora) will have drivers for it, and they support GPT to partition your massive array. Here is a how-to that details creating the GPT table and partition you will need (I did not test it myself however, as I do not have such an array).

This is Microsoft's FAQ on the GPT scheme, it will tell you what versions of Windows (mostly servers > 2003 and vista) can use it you want to stick to windows.
 
another way you can go is linux os with xfs, and run xfs straight on the array without partitions works pretty good and makes oce a snap.

Btw if you decide to go with freenas and have any questions feel free to ask me, been using it for over a year, I can hook you up with a neat script that will install the high point web raid management at boot up (freenas destroys all changes to root fs on reboot) so you can monitor/control your raid from web gui.
 
I just built a new box with this card. I used Debian Linux, which does not have the drivers built in, but I was able to compile the drivers as a kernel module and it works very well. I also setup LVM so that I can grow the array later since I only have 3 x 750gb drives in Raid 5 right now.
 
I've decided to try freenas. However, it doesn't recognize my rr2320...

I did go to Disks Management, but only da0 (my usb zip drive), and ad0 (a 250 gig drive I have plugged in) show up. I tested with the 250 gig drive to make sure everything was working, and I can share it without problems. (Reading/writing)

Axan, (or anyone else :) ) do you have any idea if there's something special I have to do? (I already have the 2320 set up as a 5.25 tb raid5 drive.)

Thanks!

John
 
I do exactly as axan suggested(linux & xfs) for exactly the reasons he gave.
 
I am about to install this card with 6 750gb drives and am wondering the same thing in terms of operating systems. I need Windows as a development platform since I use ASP.NET and MSSQL and apparently with Windows Server 2003 x86 SP1 or higher it will work with a GPT partition, but I'm also attracted to the sounds of dynamic growth with XFS under Linux. I suppose I could run Win2003 as a virtual machine under Linux, but meh...
 
cadabra said:
I've decided to try freenas. However, it doesn't recognize my rr2320...

I did go to Disks Management, but only da0 (my usb zip drive), and ad0 (a 250 gig drive I have plugged in) show up. I tested with the 250 gig drive to make sure everything was working, and I can share it without problems. (Reading/writing)

Axan, (or anyone else :) ) do you have any idea if there's something special I have to do? (I already have the 2320 set up as a 5.25 tb raid5 drive.)

Thanks!

John
Click to expand...

it should show up as daX device, did you just create the array in bios? if so it won't show up until it's built, I don't recall but i think creating array in bios causes foreground initialization which is faster but it means the array does not show up until it finishes rebuilding. In any case enable ssh access to freenas (including ability to login as root) . Login as root and run dmesg here's what it looks like on my system

Code: 
dmesg | grep rr232x
Code: 
rr232x0: <sx508x> port 0xa000-0xa0ff mem 0xdb000000-0xdb0fffff irq 18 at device 4.0 on pci3
rr232x: adapter at PCI 3:4:0, IRQ 18
rr232x: start channel [0,0]
rr232x: start channel [0,1]
rr232x: start channel [0,2]
rr232x: start channel [0,3]
rr232x: start channel [0,4]
rr232x: start channel [0,5]
rr232x: start channel [0,6]
rr232x: start channel [0,7]
rr232x: channel [0,0] started successfully
rr232x: channel [0,1] started successfully
rr232x: channel [0,2] started successfully
rr232x: channel [0,3] started successfully
rr232x: channel [0,4] started successfully
rr232x: channel [0,5] started successfully
rr232x: channel [0,6] started successfully
rr232x: channel [0,7] started successfully
rr232x0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
da0 at rr232x0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
 
sniggle said:
I am about to install this card with 6 750gb drives and am wondering the same thing in terms of operating systems. I need Windows as a development platform since I use ASP.NET and MSSQL and apparently with Windows Server 2003 x86 SP1 or higher it will work with a GPT partition, but I'm also attracted to the sounds of dynamic growth with XFS under Linux. I suppose I could run Win2003 as a virtual machine under Linux, but meh...
Click to expand...

Running xfs makes the whole growing very easy, it takes less then a minute to grow your file system (ofcourse after hours of rebuilding that raid card oce takes) but if you need windows system I think it's also doable.

server 2003 supports gpt since sp1 but you can't boot from that drive. I belive you can also resize the partition using diskpart utility so OCE would be a possibility (not 100% clear on that so test/verify before proceeding).
 
OP: also forgot to mention that rocketraid2320 is not full hardware raid, so even if you create an array in bios it doesn't start building until you load an os with a working 2320 driver. Freenas does have the driver but it doesn't have any raid management tools. Before i figured out how to install the hpt raid web gui I created my array by booting to windows xp from spare drive and using the gui for windows. After the array finished builing (like 16 or so hours) i loaded freenas and everything worked.
Since then i figured out how to install the webgui server on freenas

Grab the webgui for freebsd from high point website
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr2320.htm
then use this script (make changes to the fetch line to match your needs, you can grab the package directly from internet if you like using :
Code: 
fetch http://www.highpoint-tech.com/BIOS_Driver/HRM/FreeBSD/WebGUI-FreeBSD-v1.4-4-061507.tgz

Code: 
#Installs raid webgui for rocketraid 2320
#Create a 25MB RAM drive /var/tmp (for using pkg_add) 
mdconfig -a -t malloc -s 25M -u 10  
newfs /dev/md10  
mount /dev/md10 /var/tmp  
 
#Create a 20MB RAM drive /usr/share/hpt (destination folder for install) 
mdconfig -a -t malloc -s 20M -u 11 
newfs /dev/md11 
mkdir /usr/share/hpt 
chmod 777 /usr/share/hpt 
mount /dev/md11 /usr/share/hpt/ 
 
 
#Download an unzip Web Managment tools 
cd /var/tmp  
fetch /mnt/HPTRaid/webgui/WebGUI-FreeBSD-v1.4-4-061507.tgz   #<<<  Modify this line
tar zxvf WebGUI-FreeBSD-v1.4-4-061507.tgz
rm WebGUI-FreeBSD-v1.4-4-061507.tgz
 
#Install the dameon 
pkg_add hptsvr-https-1.4-4.tbz
After that use your browser to go to
https://freenasip:7402/
Username: RAID
password: hpt

That GUI is exactly the same as the webui for windows and will let you fully control and monitor your raid
 
I recently finished building my raid 5 on this controller and it seems to be working pretty well. Is there anything I can do to improve the performance? When I am writing large files to the server over my gigabit LAN I'm getting between 30 and 50MB/sec which is not bad but I'm wondering if improvements could be made. My cache setting is write-back. I also rigged a fan over the heatsink on this controller because it gets extremely hot.

HD Tune:
raid5_hdtach.png


Setup:
raidfun.jpg
 
same card different interface, the 2220 is pci-x, the 2320 is pci express, depending on setup the 2320 would be faster because of the extra bandwidth of the pci express.
 
axan said:
same card different interface, the 2220 is pci-x, the 2320 is pci express, depending on setup the 2320 would be faster because of the extra bandwidth of the pci express.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick answer just wondering since i just picked up a 2220.
 
also if you coping from or to single disk then 50-60mb/s is about the max you can get
If you want to fully saturate gigabit you need raid array on both sides of the connection
 
I tried using iperf with the GUI frontend in order to eliminate the potential disk read/write bottleneck and it only reported around 12MB/sec so there's something wrong with the settings I used. I'll mess with jumbo frames later tonight, assuming that won't mess anything up with my regular net connection on the router as well as my ethernet printer.
 
sniggle said:
I tried using iperf with the GUI frontend in order to eliminate the potential disk read/write bottleneck and it only reported around 12MB/sec so there's something wrong with the settings I used. I'll mess with jumbo frames later tonight, assuming that won't mess anything up with my regular net connection on the router as well as my ethernet printer.
Click to expand...

Well, that all depends on your network. From my understanding Jumbo frames is an all or nothing thing per network segment. So unless you can segment your network with the use of vlans or similar, you won't be able to use Jumbo frames unless all machines use them.

12MiB/s is just about the max you will ever see from fast ethernet.
 
If you want to test speeds without bottlenecking on one side:
copy x:\filename NUL

This will copy the file to your null device (send the data to the great bit bucket in the sky).

I get 58MB/sec doing this(actual file transfer speed), if I use multiple symultaneous copies, I max out my gigabit nic.
 
Well crap, looks like the DGL-4300 doesn't support jumbo frames.

Using the copy to NUL method I can only get around 31MB/sec, but if I start another one at the same time I get around 45MB/sec. I think I just need a higher quality gigabit switch that supports jumbo frames and has a higher forwarding and switching rate.
 
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