Performance problem with adaptec 2120S

[Scott Long]

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 amon at sockar.homeip.net wrote:
> Le 10/12/2003 à 09:48, Scott Long a écrit:
> >
> > The 2120S has some unfortunate issues that make it a slow card.  However,
>
> To what extent is it slow ? Are these issues firmware related ? (ie will
> upgrading when a new firmware release comes out help ?)

Some hardware architecture choices were made that influence this.  Better
choices were made with the 2200S so it should be faster, especially in a
64/66 PCI slot.

>
> > it should not be nearly as slow as you claim.  Do you have the 'aaccli'
> > tools installed?  If not, you can either install it from the FreeBSD ports
> > collection, or use the Linux version that is found on the 2120S CD under
> > emulation.  That should be able to tell you basic information about the
> > array and if there are any problems.  More advanced information can be
> > gathered by using the 'diag dump text' command in aaccli.  If you could
> > send me the output from that, I might be able to help.
>
> Oops, I had forgotten to enable write caching while creating the volume
> so the performance is now acceptable.
>

Are you talking about the write cache on the drives or on the array?  You
should never enable the write cache on the drives unless you are certain
that you will never ever have a power failure.  FOr the arrays, the
optimal cache configuration is to have the read cache turned off and the
write cache turned on.  If this is not the case for you, I'd like to see
the diagnostic output from the card.

Scott