Hi All,
I installed a 3ware 9500S-4LP today with four Seagate 1.5TB SATA drives in a RAID 5 configuration. With NASLite-M2 1.62 running on a 3GHZ P4 with 4GB mem and read cache is turned on I was able to achieve the following results. Both my Intel Pro/1000 NIC and the 3Ware card are PCI-X cards but in 32bit slots. I'm happy with the results although I thought I could achieve a better write throughput. I could get 50MB/s on a single drive so I guess that the entry level RAID card in a regular PCI slot coupled with the RAID 5 write penalty is keeping throughput capped.
Here's the tool I used with Win7 x64. Simple and free:
http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performanceRunning a 200MB file write on drive K: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 58.34 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 58.39 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 54.76 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 52.38 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 61.03 MB/sec
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Average (W): 56.98 MB/sec
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Running a 200MB file read on drive K: 5 times...
Iteration 1: 86.16 MB/sec
Iteration 2: 86.2 MB/sec
Iteration 3: 86.2 MB/sec
Iteration 4: 86.99 MB/sec
Iteration 5: 86.99 MB/sec
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Average (R): 86.51 MB/sec
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Here's my question, how do I tell if a drive has failed? The 3Ware card has no dedicated LED for failures or an alarm speaker. NASLite does not report a drive failure or provide SMART info due to the drives being connected the the 3Ware card. My network clients will always see the same capacity since the array will operate in degraded mode until the failed drive has been replaced. The card has the option to hook an LED up to each drive or a single LED to show array activity. My only guess is that if I hook up all four drives to individual LED's that a failed drive would somehow keep the corresponding LED fully on, fully off or blink in a regular interval.
Does anyone have experience dealing with 3Ware cards or have another suggestion?
Thanks,
John