I have a P3-800 with two IDE drives in a software RAID1 configuration. Each drive is on a separate IDE channel. Now anytime there is HD activity, I hear "beeps" and "cutting out" on a call using the X100P card. I ran the zttest program, and discovered HD activity would drop the accuracy down to between 2% and 50%. However I noticed if I disabled one drive in the RAID1 array, zttest would always report 99.98% or higher. So one drive running works fine, but as soon as I enable the second drive, all hell breaks loose. DMA and 32-bit mode are enabled on both drives as well. I have a backup server with two Promise PCI IDE controllers in it, with 4 drives in a software RAID5 configuration, so just out of curiosity sake, I stuck a X100P card in it and tried running zttest while the RAID was re-syncing. The results were pretty bad. --- Results after 384 passes --- Best: 36.779785 -- Worst: 1.562500 Is this a poor mainboard issue, or is it actually not possible to do IDE software RAID on a machine running Asterisk with X100P cards? Is anyone currently doing it? Thanks. -- Mike Benoit <ipso@snappymail.ca>
On Jul 21, 2004, at 12:36 PM, asterisk-users-request@lists.digium.com wrote:> > I have a P3-800 with two IDE drives in a software RAID1 configuration. > Each drive is on a separate IDE channel. Now anytime there is HD > activity, I hear "beeps" and "cutting out" on a call using the X100P > card. > > I ran the zttest program, and discovered HD activity would drop the > accuracy down to between 2% and 50%. > > However I noticed if I disabled one drive in the RAID1 array, zttest > would always report 99.98% or higher. So one drive running works fine, > but as soon as I enable the second drive, all hell breaks loose. DMA > and > 32-bit mode are enabled on both drives as well.Hey, I've heard that beeping too... but I never bothered to track it down until I read your message. No dropouts, however.> I have a backup server with two Promise PCI IDE controllers in it, with > 4 drives in a software RAID5 configuration, so just out of curiosity > sake, I stuck a X100P card in it and tried running zttest while the > RAID > was re-syncing. The results were pretty bad. > > --- Results after 384 passes --- > Best: 36.779785 -- Worst: 1.562500 > > Is this a poor mainboard issue, or is it actually not possible to do > IDE > software RAID on a machine running Asterisk with X100P cards? > > Is anyone currently doing it?I am. My system is a Duron 1200 with an Asus A7V266 board. I have an Athlon XP 2200 that I was planning on upgrading to. I am using the onboard IDE channels; the only cards in the server are video, ethernet, and two X100P's. No IRQ sharing. Three drives in RAID5; two of the drives are master/slave on one channel, the other shares a channel with a CD drive. I'll run the same tests you did and report back with the results. -- Seth "cave quid dicis, quando, et cui" Mattinen sethm@rollernet.us
Mike Benoit wrote:> I have a P3-800 with two IDE drives in a software RAID1 configuration. > Each drive is on a separate IDE channel. Now anytime there is HD > activity, I hear "beeps" and "cutting out" on a call using the X100P > card. > > I ran the zttest program, and discovered HD activity would drop the > accuracy down to between 2% and 50%. > > However I noticed if I disabled one drive in the RAID1 array, zttest > would always report 99.98% or higher. So one drive running works fine, > but as soon as I enable the second drive, all hell breaks loose. DMA and > 32-bit mode are enabled on both drives as well. > > I have a backup server with two Promise PCI IDE controllers in it, with > 4 drives in a software RAID5 configuration, so just out of curiosity > sake, I stuck a X100P card in it and tried running zttest while the RAID > was re-syncing. The results were pretty bad. > > --- Results after 384 passes --- > Best: 36.779785 -- Worst: 1.562500 > > Is this a poor mainboard issue, or is it actually not possible to do IDE > software RAID on a machine running Asterisk with X100P cards? > > Is anyone currently doing it? > > Thanks. >I tried software RAID1 with *. It worked well until we had to recover a drive. During drive recovery (recopy) the CPU is pegged, and it takes ~16 hours to recover the drive. I believe this is a Linux bug--there is no reason for such a high CPU usage during a disk copy. Note that any abnormal Linux shutdown will cause a drive recovery. I've since switched to 3Ware PCI RAID card. The driver is in the Linux distribution which makes it very easy to configure. The card is only about $100 US. For a new client, I'm about to purchase a dual processor Athlon motherboard with an onboard RAID chip. Stay tuned. Cheers, -- Michael Welter Introspect Telephony Corp. Denver, Colorado +1 303 674 2575 mike@introspect.com www.introspect.com
Steven Critchfield
2004-Jul-21 13:33 UTC
[Asterisk-Users] RAID affecting X100P performance...
On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 14:14, Mike Benoit wrote:> I have a P3-800 with two IDE drives in a software RAID1 configuration. > Each drive is on a separate IDE channel. Now anytime there is HD > activity, I hear "beeps" and "cutting out" on a call using the X100P > card. > > I ran the zttest program, and discovered HD activity would drop the > accuracy down to between 2% and 50%. > > However I noticed if I disabled one drive in the RAID1 array, zttest > would always report 99.98% or higher. So one drive running works fine, > but as soon as I enable the second drive, all hell breaks loose. DMA and > 32-bit mode are enabled on both drives as well. > > I have a backup server with two Promise PCI IDE controllers in it, with > 4 drives in a software RAID5 configuration, so just out of curiosity > sake, I stuck a X100P card in it and tried running zttest while the RAID > was re-syncing. The results were pretty bad. > > --- Results after 384 passes --- > Best: 36.779785 -- Worst: 1.562500 > > Is this a poor mainboard issue, or is it actually not possible to do IDE > software RAID on a machine running Asterisk with X100P cards? > > Is anyone currently doing it?Software raid is bad. IDE hardware raid isn't much better. Software raid is always going to eat your system alive since the CPU has to be busy with 2 or more writes as opposed to it's normal 1. Raid 5 spreads the load over spindles and should take less CPU total, but don't bet on it if it is IDE. Go SCSI or don't do RAID. -- Steven Critchfield <critch@basesys.com>
Mike Benoit wrote:> I have a P3-800 with two IDE drives in a software RAID1 configuration. > Each drive is on a separate IDE channel. Now anytime there is HD > activity, I hear "beeps" and "cutting out" on a call using the X100P > card. > > I ran the zttest program, and discovered HD activity would drop the > accuracy down to between 2% and 50%. > > However I noticed if I disabled one drive in the RAID1 array, zttest > would always report 99.98% or higher. So one drive running works fine, > but as soon as I enable the second drive, all hell breaks loose. DMA and > 32-bit mode are enabled on both drives as well.Have you tried hdparm -u1 on the drives as well? This prevents other IRQs being blocked during disk access. Regards, Richard
On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 12:14, Mike Benoit wrote:> I have a P3-800 with two IDE drives in a software RAID1 configuration. > Each drive is on a separate IDE channel. Now anytime there is HD > activity, I hear "beeps" and "cutting out" on a call using the X100P > card.Wow, i'm seeing exactly the same behaviour! AthlonXP/1800, MSI NForce1 mobo, Wildcard TDM400P, soft RAID1 on /boot, soft RAID5 on everything else, Asterisk-1.0-RC1, Linux Fedora 2 fully updated. I'll explore the idea offered by someone else in this thread and shuffle the cards around, trying to put the Wildcard in another PCI bus. -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/