Mates, bendiy,
hmm looks like I have to join the "Team of happy Areca Controllers owners"...:(
So I have SuperMicro Server when I was using HP P400 + HP P800 without any issues (Server never saw a PSOD, 7 months) and now I change these controllers for one Areca ARC-1882ix-24 with 1GB of cache and BBU of course (expensive solution like for home server).
And the problems started...:(
HW:
1x SuperMicro MB 8XDAH+-F, 144GB of RAM, 2x L5638 CPU
1x Areca ARC-1882ix-24 with 1GB cache and BBU
6x Seagate ST31000528AS SATA hdd (2 of them have CC34 firmware, rest have CC38)
6x Maxtor STM31000528AS SATA hdd (same like Seagate and one have CC34 fw, rest have CC38)
SW:
ESXi v5.0.0-504890
40-70 running VMs...
This is my lab enviroment
1. during a lot of data copy/migration with simultanously on the 3 datastores (on 2 RAID Sets, one is R5 and second is R10) when some machines run on the same datastores after some time... hard to say what but not so long ESXi v5.0.0-504890 server crashes with PSOD...:(( It done it in one week 2 times right now :smileysad:, I'm really not so happy of my new Controller...:(
2. Strange things comes with performance... one time, after ESXi start performance is... very poor...:(, looks like 5x slower than it can be when...yep when what? thats the problem - I don't know, in some moments, after changing some parameters and for the end have same like when a server start in the miracle controller works with good speed/performance I expect... but for example when I will start to migrate a lot of data between a datastores it will probably slow down for a while... and may, or may not speed up again, I dont understand this but copying 4 times the same vm from one datastore to the second may be with 240MB/s... or 35MB/s...there are rather no often values between this max and min speed (of course, when I do something on the vms or vms do something in the same time copying slow down but a lot of times it slow down without any good reasons :smileysad:()
- for example... everything looks good, 10 vms running, one is FS and CIFS speed is about 80MB/s... preety good, when I copy/move some machines between datastores... after operation end the same FS is slowing down to 12-15MB/s without any good reason (disks blinking easly without searching for a data hard...) why?? I dont know, of course during copying FS is working extremaly slow... and slowing down to 0.1-1.5MB/s, it far far slower than on my P400 that in the same situatuion have about 8-10MB/s !!!! but ok differences in drivers/hw...tuning... but what the hell is going on after the copy that controller works 5 times slower than before??!!!
3. I'm not so sure that when server is online and I'm changing options&advanced on the controller via web everything is changing in realtime or/and without restart (yes there are some options that require restart but some that not require... looks sometimes like didn't work without or immediately after change, but when they work? i dont know...:()
bendiy:
yep, it looks like it rather (I have "only" two crashes in one week of using Areca) crash when I clone or move a lot of data between datastores on the same controller but on different RAID Sets (one is RAID10 of 4 hdd and second is RAID5 with 6 hdd) and when on the same datastores ran some virtual machines in the same time... so the storage is heavely loaded with different types of IOPS. When I move between datastores on the same RAID Set but different Volumes it (for a week now) never crash, i'v copied about 10TB in different ways.
Note, during before and after ESXi crash (PSOD) Areca Controller works very well, web based management works ok and didn't show anything in Event log... so the problem is with not a HW of Controller itself but with a drivers and/or compatibility wirh high workload and ESX/ESXi v4/v5, as I read on some other sites when Areca controllers ware stress tests on windows 7/2k8 on some PC lowcosts Mobo with SSD drives it crashess too (with BSOD on MS Win), I dont know that this is the same problem with driver or just a lowcost mobo problem but it doesn't look so good for such (in teory) highend controller card like Areca ARC-1882ix-24....:(((
To Areca Support, please solve this issue, I will send You detailed report of that problem tomorrow.
kind regards
NTShad0w