Steve … the argument of correct stripe size has raged long and hard, and in reality I can’t answer your specific question on the HP RAID card because I’m not an expert on that product. However, if this was an Adaptec controller (such as 51645) then I’m be answering … use the defaults.

While there is credibility in doing the maths and trying to match the stripe size to the OS/application requirements, the reality is that the defaults will “normally” walk all over specifying a particular size. Why? Because our engineers spend a lot of time in making the defaults work best. We aim to make an out-of-the-box experience for the majority of users, and put a lot of effort into making the product work without a user having to be a rocket scientist to use it.

Therefore (if this was an Adaptec product) you can try 64kb, but if I was a betting man I’d still go with a few bucks on the defaults (256kb).

In re-reading this … yes RAID 50 is a great way to go on this system. It will be a good compromise of performance, capacity and redundancy. RAID 10 would be very, very fast but a little too expensive for most user’s tastes on those drives.

Ciao
Neil

Ernst … it’s true that we don’t have a 17544 driver for the 3 series family of controllers, whereas that is the latest driver for the 5 series controllers. However the code is “pretty much” the same and yes, you can run the one driver for all cards in the system without problem.

This situation will have arisen because you started with the 3 series, then added the 5 series, or you updated the 5 series controller last. We basically use the same code with slight variations for each card. You can’t use the driver for a 5 series to load a 3 series card, but the latest driver update of any card will update all cards.

Hope this helps.
Ciao
Neil

I pointed out our integration guide to one of our readers to get an idea of how this is used. It reminded me that I often get the question from customers … “the guide only shows 3 series controllers - I have a 5 series controller”. Good point that. However connectivity between the 3 and 5 series controller is the same. If you see a diagram that shows you how to cable up a 31605 to a Supermicro 836TQ backplane then it’s the same process for the 51645.

So go take a look at our integration guide … it’s a very helpful tool.
http://www.adaptec.com/integrationguide/introduction.htm

Ciao
Neil

What surprised me, I presume because I’m used to this stuff, was the customers reaction to updating drive firmware. It appears that he has never had to do this before. His reaction was one of complete incredulity. “Surely you’re joking” was the polite version of his response.

Now for the last year this has been common practice for every system I deal with to update drive firmwares. However, it seems that it’s all down to a vendor/product’s credibility status when it comes to updates. If I was talking to the customer about Windows, updates are just a matter of routine. Even when discussing Adaptec RAID cards customers are pretty used to firmware updates (we do them quite a lot). It’s interesting to look at motherboard and backplane firmware updates. The customers are generally aware of them, and might have done them once or twice before, but not commonly.

When it comes to drives, many of the old timers in the industry have never done one, and are pretty scared/nonplussed when told they have to do 16 of them in one server (and that there is no 100% guarantee that the drive’s data will remain intact), and are pretty hard to convince that I’m just not leading them up the garden path (or trying to dodge the blame). Therefore it seems the pecking order for credibility of getting it right the first time is:

Drives
Backplanes
Motherboards
Cards
Operating Systems

As the list goes down people seem more willing to accept that there will be changes and updates are necessary. Interestingly, while typing this little ditty I’ve come to the realisation about how much software is involved in each of the components mentioned. Drives certainly have software, but (and this will get me into trouble) it’s not as complex as an OS. Backplanes, at least in the form of smart backplanes with SES2 processors certainly have software (firmware). Motherboards have lots (BIOS etc), cards even more (BIOS and their own low-level operating system), while OS are, of course, just pure software.

So it would appear that the weak link in the chain is the software component of each product. Now that’s not really telling anyone anything … we all knew that. However, the next time a tech tells you to update a firmware don’t be so surprised … the stuff is everywhere.

Ciao
Neil

There is now an easy answer to work this question out. Adaptec are releasing a software product called “MaxIQ Predictor”. The product is designed to capture data from a system, then analyse it to determine whether that system would be a suitable candidate for the MaxIQ Hybrid Array (SSD Caching) Product we now sell, but this new software product actually has many more uses.

Yes, it will tell you whether you’d benefit from SSD Caching, but much more importantly, it will tell you the percentage of random vs sequential reads and writes that are happening in your system. For most people this will highlight the type of data they are running on their systems. This is useful information for determining exactly what sort of RAID array, and what type of disks you should actually be running in your system to achieve best performance (with or without an SSD Cache drive).

This product will be available on our website soon. It’s a command line tool that uses industry standard ways of capturing data that can be analysed by the predictor tool. You don’t neeed to be running an Adaptec product for this to work, or even in fact have RAID in your system … you just capture data for a couple of hours then analyse the output of the system, changing a few variables so that you can set your baseline for your current system. The software currently works on Windows and 32-bit Linux, and I hear on the grapvevine that we’ll be spreading this to VMware and various other platforms in the near future.

The really interesting part is when I’ve run this on customer systems most customers are very surprised at exactly what sort of data they are pushing through their storage … most have no idea.

So if you’d like to try this software now, get a hold of your local Adaptec Field Engineer (don’t ask a salesperson unless you want an earful about our products ). Alternatively, send me an email (neil_cameron@adaptec.com) and I’ll send out the software to you. I can just see my editor (Adaptec Marketing Guru) falling off his chair about now, but what the heck … we have the technology, it’s out and about so why shouldn’t everyone be testing their system to see whether their current RAID type is actually suitable for their data … no matter what or whose RAID product you are using.

I’ll be very interested to see if this blog makes the cold hard light of day.

Ciao
Neil