Testing new mpr driver

[Douglas Gilbert]

On 14-05-07 04:59 AM, Borja Marcos wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I just saw that there's a new driver for LSI3008 SAS3 cards. I have updated a test system to -STABLE, installed one of those cards (in this case, the OEM version sold by IBM as a HBA, with IT firmware).
>
> mpr0: <LSI SAS3008> port 0x3f00-0x3fff mem 0x912f0000-0x912fffff irq 32 at device 0.0 on pci17
>
>
>
>
> Excellent so far I have noticed a difference with the mps based LSI2008 cards: in the same hardware configuration as my previous tests (except, of course, the HBA) it seems to be faster. And I am using just one cable to connect the HBA to the backplane instead of two, I didn't have another cable available.
>
> <ATA Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q>         at scbus0 target 25 lun 0 (pass0,da0)
> <ATA Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q>         at scbus0 target 26 lun 0 (pass1,da1)
> <ATA Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q>         at scbus0 target 27 lun 0 (pass2,da2)
> <ATA Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q>         at scbus0 target 28 lun 0 (pass3,da3)
> <ATA Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q>         at scbus0 target 29 lun 0 (pass4,da4)
> <ATA Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q>         at scbus0 target 30 lun 0 (pass5,da5)
> <ATA Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q>         at scbus0 target 33 lun 0 (pass6,da6)
> <ATA Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q>         at scbus0 target 34 lun 0 (pass7,da7)
> <ATA Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q>         at scbus0 target 35 lun 0 (pass8,da8)
> <IBM-ESXS SAS EXP BP 61A6>         at scbus0 target 263 lun 0 (pass9,ses0)
> <IBM-ESXS SAS EXP BP 61A6>         at scbus0 target 288 lun 0 (pass10,ses1)
>
> I have created a ZFS pool with the SSDs. With the LSI2008 based card I needed to run several bonnie++ instances in parallel in order to saturate the I/O bandwidth, and with this card a single instance reaches peak performance.
>
> Does it make sense at all?
>
> I assume that the driver could be considered almost production ready. Is it going to be included in 9.3 as well, as the manpage states, or is it a typo?

I'm keen to try the mpr driver and have LSI 9300-4i/4i4e
HBAs plus a 12 Gbps SSD and SAS-2 bits to test with it.
[Free-standing SAS-3 expanders are not common (but Areca just
released one).]

My FreeBSD system is at 10.0-RELEASE-p2 and moving it to
-STABLE looks like a fair amount of pain. Further I can see
nothing on the FreeBSD site about the mpr driver. Could you
supply links to any information about this driver? Is it
likely to appear in 10.0-RELEASE-p? any time soon?


FreeBSD is seriously lacking in the SAS-3 area compared to
some other OSes. As SATA SSDs are strangled by their 6 Gbps
(single port) interface, several new SAS 12 Gbps (SAS-3)
products have appeared in the last month or so, with more
to follow.

Doug Gilbert