Poweredge 2850 w\PERC4 embedded, Config? Performance?

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dekard

2[H]4U
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Dell just shipped out a Poweredge 2850 to use with 3 74g 15k SCSI drives hooked up to the Embedded RAID - PERC4 Embedded Integrated included with the system. This is going to be used as a DC and exchange server for my small office of 5 people. It represents a massive upgrade in power and I'm really looking forward to seeing it installed.


I'll likely setup a smallish partition (20-30g) for the os and use the rest for other data and exchange.

There are two questions, first, what settings should I use when configuring the raid controller and array for maximum performance in this environment. I'm definately looking for a raid 5 setup, but specifically need information on cache schemes and other options to optimize the performance of the raid array.

Second, what read and write speeds should I see? IOmeter scores? Are there any locations I can see benchmarks for this type of drive array? I've googled this a bit and can't locate anything.
 
Good god, that machine is extreme overkill for 5 people. I'm using a Dell Poweredge 2800(2 3.0GHz Xeons and 2GB ram under W2KS) with 2 74GB 10K disks running in Raid 1 with the PERC4. We have about 50 computers and roughly 80-100 email boxes. This machine is almost always at 0% load, even with McAfee Groupshield and GFI MailEssentials(spam killer) running on it. Disk access isn't even close to being an issue.

I don't think you are going to have to worry about anything. I'd just set it up quickly and roll with it.
 
sandmanx said:
Good god, that machine is extreme overkill for 5 people. I'm using a Dell Poweredge 2800(2 3.0GHz Xeons and 2GB ram under W2KS) with 2 74GB 10K disks running in Raid 1 with the PERC4. We have about 50 computers and roughly 80-100 email boxes. This machine is almost always at 0% load, even with McAfee Groupshield and GFI MailEssentials(spam killer) running on it. Disk access isn't even close to being an issue.

I don't think you are going to have to worry about anything. I'd just set it up quickly and roll with it.
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Haha.. thanks for the vote of confidence. I was able to snag a deal on this server and am thrilled to have the 15k rpm disks. I'm with you, I think this is a overkill too, but I also plan for it to last 3-5 years as the primary DC and with the rate the company has been growing we may be at 10-15 people by then. From what you are saying we shouldn't have a capacity problem at that point.

Then again, this is the only server. And it is doing exchange, application sharing, my documents redirection, terminal services, print serving and routing and firewall. Oh, Sharepoint too...

Lol, the old box currently doing duty is a Athlon XP 2200+ with a single 160g 7.2k rpm drive. 768 megs of ram never worked so hard in their life! I'm sure this Poweredge will handle it, no problem.
 
sandmanx said:
Good god, that machine is extreme overkill for 5 people. I'm using a Dell Poweredge 2800(2 3.0GHz Xeons and 2GB ram under W2KS) with 2 74GB 10K disks running in Raid 1 with the PERC4. We have about 50 computers and roughly 80-100 email boxes. This machine is almost always at 0% load, even with McAfee Groupshield and GFI MailEssentials(spam killer) running on it. Disk access isn't even close to being an issue.

I don't think you are going to have to worry about anything. I'd just set it up quickly and roll with it.
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What does the PERC4 cross reference to. I know its another brand, just not which card.
 
That server should be fine, even with 40-50 users. I run AD w/ GC on mine, along with Exchange Server 2K, plus the previously mentioned vscan and spam program. Just watch the ram usage and add more if you need it, and I'm assuming you got at least dual procs so you should be fine on CPU power. The only thing I'd worry about is terminal server if you are using it for something other than administrative purposes, it could really tax the machine if your users are using cpu intensive tasks.

I don't know who makes the controller. I've looked before, but I forgot pretty quickly, since I have 3 of them in our various poweredge servers. I think you should be able to find out though with a quick google search, since there are various types of the PERC4 controller, I've got the PERC4eDI on a coulple of mine.
 
dekard said:
Then again, this is the only server. And it is doing exchange, application sharing, my documents redirection, terminal services, print serving and routing and firewall. Oh, Sharepoint too...
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Given the amount of traffic that flows into an Exchange server, I wouldn't use the same server as the router or firewall. The cost of a seperate gateway router/firewall is minimal compared to cost of having your entire business taken down by an SMTP exploit (plus the NAT table stops a lot of random junk before it can get to the servers.)

(Personally, for five people, I'd just use a hosted Exchange provider and not deal with an onsite server at all.)
 
dekard said:
What does the PERC4 cross reference to. I know its another brand, just not which card.
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It's LSI; I think the equivalent is the Megaraid 150-4. I could be wrong ;)

 
unhappy_mage said:
It's LSI; I think the equivalent is the Megaraid 150-4. I could be wrong ;)
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The PERC4's are mechanically similar to LSI's, but have component level differences and major firmware differences. You cannot flash a PERC to LSI firmware, or vice-versa. They are made specifically for Dell, who also writes the firmware for them. PERCs have always had, and continue to have significantly lower performance than genuine LSI. Anywhere from 20-80% slower on average.
 
AreEss said:
The PERC4's are mechanically similar to LSI's, but have component level differences and major firmware differences. You cannot flash a PERC to LSI firmware, or vice-versa. They are made specifically for Dell, who also writes the firmware for them. PERCs have always had, and continue to have significantly lower performance than genuine LSI. Anywhere from 20-80% slower on average.
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That's not always the case. PERC4 can refer to many different RAID controllers, actually. In most cases, the LSI MegaRAID firmware is what is used on them (with some Dell-specific build options), and in many cases it is possible to put MegaRAID generic firmware on a PERC controller. However, this depends on which specific PERC4 controller it is, because I've even seen an Adaptec SCSI controller branded as PERC4, though most of that generation is LSI controllers. Dell generally does not write their own firmware and they do not have an in-house RAID stack.
 
unhappy_mage said:
It's LSI; I think the equivalent is the Megaraid 150-4. I could be wrong ;)

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There may be a version of the Perc4 that is SATA, the one I've got in my server is SCSI tho.
 
So... how about them reading comprehension skills. :eek:

Hey! Who re-arranged the smilies!

 
unhappy_mage said:
So... how about them reading comprehension skills. :eek:

Hey! Who re-arranged the smilies!

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The smiles look normal to me, you might need to clear your cache. I've had weird things happen to them in the past with firefox and a cache clear and restart fixed it.

I'm fairly sure all of the PERC4 family is SCSI only. I can't imagine trying to run a SATA raid on a server anyways. Where I am would kill an SATA raid in a few days with the access I see on our Raid 5 array.
 
UICompE02 said:
That's not always the case. PERC4 can refer to many different RAID controllers, actually. In most cases, the LSI MegaRAID firmware is what is used on them (with some Dell-specific build options), and in many cases it is possible to put MegaRAID generic firmware on a PERC controller. However, this depends on which specific PERC4 controller it is, because I've even seen an Adaptec SCSI controller branded as PERC4, though most of that generation is LSI controllers. Dell generally does not write their own firmware and they do not have an in-house RAID stack.
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Not been paying much attention lately, feh. Go me. ;)

The current PERC4's are LSI-based using Intel IOP's. That's SCSI and SATA for those of you who missed the "all" part. Yes, that also includes PCI-Express (IOP332.) The firmware is not LSI standard though. Dell used to have their own in-house back around the PERC2's, which got their hands on the firmware and modified it for their own purposes. This includes changing PCIIDs, and configuration, without regards to what these changes do to other parts of the controller. The LSI-derivative PERC4's will not flash to LSI as Dell's gone back to changing hardware just enough for it to fail.
Funny thing; Dell's not the only LSI-based rebrander, just the only one that nukes performance. LSI also powers the HP NetRAID-1/Si, NetRAID-3/Si, Embedded NetRAID, and the Intel SRC family.

sandmanx said:
I'm fairly sure all of the PERC4 family is SCSI only. I can't imagine trying to run a SATA raid on a server anyways. Where I am would kill an SATA raid in a few days with the access I see on our Raid 5 array.
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That's what I believe is the case, and the SATA's are CERC. However, with Dell, that could change in an instant if they think it'll net more margin, something they desperately need. Right now it's easier to go CERC/PERC to differentiate, and pick up the folks who replace their PowerEdge 850 with a 2850 when they realize how bad SATA is for their application. I would have to check one, but I believe the CERC family are exclusively Adaptec based. I may be wrong there though. (Lack of interest in garbage hardware.)
 
sandmanx said:
The smiles look normal to me, you might need to clear your cache.
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A little OT, but didn't :) used to be at the top? And :eek: in the middle column? Oh well, doesn't really matter.

I've always found it odd that the Dell-rebuilt stuff is so much slower than the equivalent LSI cards. The conspiracy theorist in me says there's a Reason, but I can't figure out what it could be. Dell only sells Dell stuff, they don't profit from selling crippled cards.

 
unhappy_mage said:
I've always found it odd that the Dell-rebuilt stuff is so much slower than the equivalent LSI cards. The conspiracy theorist in me says there's a Reason, but I can't figure out what it could be. Dell only sells Dell stuff, they don't profit from selling crippled cards.
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Actually, Dell profits a lot from selling crippled cards. Why?
"Well, you're exceeding the capabilities of the PERC-modelnumberhere. We can sell you the upgraded PERC-biggermodelnumberhere for only $BIGMARGINANDPROFITHERE. Or upgrade the memory for $STUPIDLARGEPROFITHERE. And have someone come out to install it for you for only $EVENBIGGERPROFITHERE."
All makes sense now, doesn't it?

Really though, it's just incompetence on Dell's part by and large. They just figure out ways to take advantage of their own incompetence.
 
interesting about the lower performance... kinda of a shame, really... Personally, I'm not too worried about it since the disks i've got are way overkill for the application. I'll remember this tho, in case I ever need to config a high performance server.
 
Here's an interesting bit of data. Per Newegg there are two options in 74g 15k scsi drives, and Dell choose to ship the more expensive of the two with this server. It came with Seagate Cheetah's 15k 4's which are priced at $560 each at the egg. I was quite suprised to see these drives in the system instead of the other option which is $200 less expensive.

Here's a hd tach benchmark of the drives performance, burst speed is 421 megabytes a second, random access is 5.6 ms and average read is 128 megabytes a second. I'd post a graph but I'm on a rdp connection and don't feel like fussing with that right now. Anyone want to compare that to the LSI version of this controller in raid 5?

Oh, one last thing, this controller has 256 megs of ram onboard.
 
dekard said:
And why is that?
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Faster, cheaper, and more reliable. That say it?

Seagate is the default only because they're the default. There's no reason for anyone to buy their 10 or 15k drives if something else is available.

 
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