I finally did those benchmarks i promised:

http://projectdream.org/wordpress/2009/11/07/hps-e200-controller-really-sucks/

I suggest you to use a PCI-E based NIC with a server chipset – these are more expensive than el-cheapo NICs from D-Link and similar vendors, but you’ll less likely have issues with drivers and such.

I’m sorry, i didn’t mean to sound condescending – it’s just that i’m not sure that the behaviour you described will exhibit in every case. I’ve seen enough issues with entry-level storage, but they’re not all that common.

Regarding IBM’s RAID Controllers, the ServeRAID 8k/8k-i that was shipped in the old x3650 line of products was a horrible POS. It needed several firmware iterations till it worked right and a few of the released iterations broke your whole RAID if you installed them. It was a complete mess for several years. The ServeRAID 8k’s were OEM’d from Adaptec.

Now, IBM has pretty much switched everything over to LSI controllers. There are currently two entry-level controllers, the ServeRAID BR10i, an LSI Fakeraid Controller that can only do RAID 1/0/10 and the ServeRAID MR10i, which is a real controller with 256MB BBWC and support for SSDs, RAID6, etc.

The biggest disadvantage of the LSI controllers is the configuration for the MR10i (which sucks) and the application for all the controller (MSM, which i wrote about in my x3650 M2 review).

I can’t really recommend any hardware or controller anymore. They all suck on different levels and have different issues.

my story is not a ‘could be true’ story. It just happened 3 weeks ago.
BTW, I lost no data. After a hard reset of the server it accepted the 4th disk as replacement. At least that worked with HP.
An (IMHO) professionial controller just had not needed a reboot. I have never seen such behaviour before. HP is not serious for me anymore.

Regarding your ‘use IBM instead’: Which controller would you suggest as a replacement for the E200i?
Pricing/Availability/Sources?

Thanks, Paul

You’re almost right – i’ve forgot to post about here. I’ve tested Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 on a ML110 and for that i’ve decided to set it up with a RAID5, in order to test the performance.

And you’re right – the performance was absolutely horrible. But the RAID10 performance on the E200 was kinda okay, though not great.

Your stories with the failed Array sound certainly bad. And they could be true – i’m glad i don’t have one of these controllers in production use anywhere. You might want to switch to IBM ;)

I guess you’re never going to test the speed as it’s 4 months ago you ‘promised’ it.
BTW there is not much use in testing the speed as the E200i does NOT qualify for a production environment at all!

I wrote in April about my 4x750GB RAID5 /w hotspare.
Well, the whole server LOCKED UP when a single drive failed.
Neither was the hotspare used to ‘rebuild’ the RAID5. Nor did the RAID5 array work with just 2 disks (as it’s supposed to do!).

I already wrote I consider the E200i a piece of crap. That was before a server was failing even though /2/ failsafe startegies (RAID5, HotSpare) had been applied!
I began to remove the E200i from customers servers.
I recemmended your fellow readers to do the same for production environments. BTW a Win2k3 Software RAID5 is MORE failsafe and MUCH faster than the E200i.

Paul

I can confirm that the 1TB drives work without issues. I do not have any 1.5TB drives that i could try.

My question is the same as Phil’s. Can you confirm that the 4x1TB setup works fine on your ML110 G5? For I tried to install 2×1.5TB disks and they were not recognized at all by the system.

Thank you very much for your response!

BTW how would the software not recognize SATA disks? AFAIK the E200i does not tell the OS which types of HDDs it’s operating on.

HTH, Paul

I just want to ask you about your first problem installing ESXi. Installation stops at exactly 44% each time, telling about possible “bad sectors”. I have 1GB installed and the 250GB SATA disk. I am using ESXi 3.5 Update 3 because Update 4 does not recognize the SATA disk. I changed NX bit and VT, but this doesn’t help. Some ideas? Thanks in forward for any one who could help me.

Oscar

I guess it is still copying ;)
Just teasing, you’re not an HP-man.

But I was still very curious if I have been wrong in all my doing (7 servers at 5 customers sites with same “performance” [doesn't matter, these are servers for 2-5 workstations]). And in case I was I was even more curious to get to know your solution.
Just as you “saved my live” with the ESXi installation on HP110/G5 by giving a simple hint.

Thanks, Paul

No, just lazyness. I hope to do this this friday. I’ve been busy – i’ve even written new blog posts ;)

I guess you did not took the time to test? Or are the results THAT bad that you don’t wish to publish ;)

No, i don’t work for HP. In fact, i work for an IBM BP ;)

I’ll reformat my ML110 to a RAID5 and test the results you’ve got.

My 4GB Win2k3 server (4×750GB RAID5 + Spare) has 4x “Samsung Spinpoint F1 , 3.5″, 750 GB 7200rpm , 8.9ms , 32MB cache”. To copy a 3GB file on the RAID 5 takes full 6 minutes!!!

My laptop uses a ST9250421ASG (Seagate Momentus, 2.5″, 250 GB 7200rpm, 16MB cache) drive. Copying the same file locally takes 3:30 minutes. On a power optimized laptop drive!

Now tell me again about the SATA drives attached to the e200i…

to 850cc:
unlike workstation esxi always reserves the full disk space you assign. That might be 100GB and so it takes ages to “prepare” the virtual disks. Only solution is to exchange the e200i to sth. better.

There’s a reason why i chose RAID10 and described the performance as “acceptable” ;)

Regarding Spam: You’re right. I’m not always that cautious when approving comments, and the spam is getting better and better.

850cc: Regarding the performance issues you mentioned. I’ve noticed the same when using ESXi, but the symptoms didn’t appear using Server 2008 / Hyper-V – i didn’t do more with ESXi since none of our customers use it. Also, i had some very strange issues with my E200 before i upgraded the firmware to the latest version. You might try using another NIC in order to to evaluate if the problem is with the Disk or NIC.