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3ware 9650SE questions

post #1 of 50
7/4/08 at 2:18am
Thread Starter 
I just installed a 8-port 3ware 9650SE RAID card. It is in a machine with the following sepcs:

Microsoft Windows Vists Ultimate x64 SP1
Core 2 E8200 2.66Ghz
Asus P5Q-Pro Motherboard
etc

I have a few questions regarding the card:


2) What is the "Carve Size"?

3) Where can I check the S.M.A.R.T. settings for the drives? ie the temp?

5) What stripe size should I select? It's currrently a 3TB array (four 1TB seagates in raid 5)? I'll probably be used mainly for backup and movie storage purposes.

7) What is the use for the 3ware BIOS if I already have web interface (3DM2) installed? Where do I get the bios? It doesn't seem to be included in the CD. I should mention I don't have a floppy drive. I know some BIOS's require floppy to install.

8) When I went into computer management, I was given the choice between GPT and MBR. What is the different between the two and can my machine run GPT (apparently, it was originally designed for itanium processors or something)

9) I can't seem to get the email notification feature working. It keeps giving me a "could not connect to server" message when I press the send test message button.

10) Why is the CPU utilization at ~20-30% when I copy files? I thought the point of hardware raid was to not use cpu cycles.


Sorry for my long litany of questions; this is my first time using a RAID card and I'm just not too familiar with the technicalities of such devices. Thanks in advance!
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post #2 of 50
7/4/08 at 1:17pm
Thread Starter 
bump...
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post #3 of 50
7/4/08 at 6:58pm
Oh boy. The answers to those questions encompass years of learning for starters, and even then there's no definitive answers to some of your questions.
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post #4 of 50
7/4/08 at 7:46pm
Thread Starter 
oh dear. I was hoping for simple and quick answers..... Could someone point me in the right direction then? Sorry for the random numbering, but I've deleted some of the questions to which I think I have found the answer for.
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post #5 of 50
7/5/08 at 1:04am
If you're mostly storing large files, choose a large stripe size.

If you want > 2Tb volumes, choose GPT vs MBR.

Check 3ware.com for updated firmware (bios) files. Bios is the firmware that runs the card, the 3dm2 tools are the software that interact with the OS and provide management tools.

No clue on SMART stuff. I run all my 3ware cards under linux and use smartctl to access smart info.

I have no idea why you're seeing such high cpu usage, I see 0.5% on read/write with my linux box.
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post #6 of 50
7/5/08 at 2:58am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by boykster View Post

If you're mostly storing large files, choose a large stripe size.

If you want > 2Tb volumes, choose GPT vs MBR.

Check 3ware.com for updated firmware (bios) files. Bios is the firmware that runs the card, the 3dm2 tools are the software that interact with the OS and provide management tools.

No clue on SMART stuff. I run all my 3ware cards under linux and use smartctl to access smart info.

I have no idea why you're seeing such high cpu usage, I see 0.5% on read/write with my linux box.


Could you elaborate on what you mean by "If you want > 2Tb volumes, choose GPT vs MBR." Do you mean "if I want >2tb, choose GPT OVER MBR"? If so, why? And is it possible to change to GPT after I already chose MBR? How would this be done?
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post #7 of 50
7/5/08 at 2:40pm
Thread Starter 
anyone?
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post #8 of 50
7/5/08 at 3:07pm
I agree that you should use the largest stripe size for media files and using GPT is the way to go. You can get updated BIOS settings and updated software with a trip to the 3Ware site and it is easy to install (no floppy needed: just a reboot).

Wikipedia has a good definition of what GPT is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
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post #9 of 50
7/5/08 at 3:21pm
You will need to reformat to use GPT. It is part of the basic functioning of the drive and not an add-on.

Carve Size: You can allow Windows to partition your 3TB drive or (greatly preferably) let the 9650 do the carving (partitioning). Most Windows operating systems can only see and can use only up to 2TB of space at one time. Accordingly, you have the auto feature in the 9650 to carve up the drive into a max of 2 TB sections so Windows sees all of the 3TB drive that you have. You will have a first partition of 2TB and a second partition seen as 1TB. If it did not carve up the drive, all Windows would see is just a 2TB drive because it can not see more than 2TB in any drive.
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post #10 of 50
7/5/08 at 8:53pm
Sorry, was away after my post. Rembrandt1 covered it pretty well. GPT supports partitions up to 16 exabytes or something ridiculous, while MBR is limited to 2Tb unless some workarounds are used. And yep, switching to GPT will require you to reformat and start over. If you're already using MBR, and can access a volume larger than 2Tb on your system, and don't ever plan on moving this array to a different machine, then don't worry about it.

Larger stripe size for media files (larger in size) will help optimize seeking when the array reads data from the striped set, reducing seeking and increasing throughput.
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post #11 of 50
7/5/08 at 11:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rembrandt1 View Post

You will need to reformat to use GPT. It is part of the basic functioning of the drive and not an add-on.

Carve Size: You can allow Windows to partition your 3TB drive or (greatly preferably) let the 9650 do the carving (partitioning). Most Windows operating systems can only see and can use only up to 2TB of space at one time. Accordingly, you have the auto feature in the 9650 to carve up the drive into a max of 2 TB sections so Windows sees all of the 3TB drive that you have. You will have a first partition of 2TB and a second partition seen as 1TB. If it did not carve up the drive, all Windows would see is just a 2TB drive because it can not see more than 2TB in any drive.

Using the term "partition" to describe what 3Ware's carving is doing is not accurate. The controller is logically carving your large array into chunks that Windows can understand with only 32bits and presenting them as "logical units". In a 32bit Windows OS you will need to use Disk Management to initialize the array as a Dynamic Disk, format the first logical unit and then Extend the volume to the additional logical units. Then you will have a single file system on your whole 3TB array. If you initialize it this way then you can move the array to most any Windows machine. If you use GPT then you will have to use XP-64, Vista-64 or Server 2003 or 2008.

- Mike
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post #12 of 50
7/6/08 at 11:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by miimura View Post

If you use GPT then you will have to use XP-64, Vista-64 or Server 2003 or 2008.

Or any *nix based OS that supports GPT partitions - which is most recent distros. He's already using Vista x64, so why not take advantage of the newer partition table format that isn't crippled by the 32-bit limitation?

I think the auto-carving is a great solution for overcoming this limitation, but no need to use it if you can natively avoid the problem.
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post #13 of 50
7/6/08 at 2:38pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for all of your replies.

Regarding the GPT vs MBR issue, I thought MBR formatted drives are only limited to 2TB if its being used as a boot drive. I'll try to find the link to this article again... maybe I read it wrong.

Thanks for the explanations for the carve size. They were quite clear and helpful.

About the stripe size - it is possible to change it after I already made an unit? I can't seem to find anything about this in the user guides. And why does the user guide say "In general, use smaller stripe sizes for sequential access (such as video
access) and larger stripe sizes for random access (such as a database)."? So shouldn't I use the smallest possible stripe size if I'm doing mainly sequential access things?

Also, I just tried the online migration feature. I don't know if it works yet since it's still at 14%. However, it's really slowly - 14% took about 13.5hr, so about 1%/hr. At this rate, it's going to take at least 4 days to complete the migration. Is this normal?
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post #14 of 50
7/6/08 at 4:57pm
Its not what you want to hear, but the only way to really figure out which stripe size is going to work "best" for you, is to try it out. I have a 9500S-12 card and I initially built my array with a 64k stripe size. I recently added a couple drives and changed the stripe size to 256k and I'm getting much better throughput on my read speeds. I also tweaked some of the i/o settings on the OS (Fedora 9) so the combination made a big difference.

As for the slowness of the online migration - yep, it took my array about 48 hours to expand. It was about 1% an hour for the first 25% or so, then it picked up speed. Its slow, but it works very well. You can speed up the process a bit by going to the 'controller settings' page of the 'management' menu and setting the 'rebuild/migrate rate' to 'faster rebuild'. For general performance, you should set that and the verify rate to 'faster i/o' and make sure you enable write cache - especially if you have a BBU.

If MBR works for you, then go for it and use it. The filesystem tools in linux don't support >2Tb with MBR at all, and you have to use an approach similar to what miimura outlined using LVM. I chose to build a single natively supported large drive using GPT so I wouldn't have that hassle.
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post #15 of 50
7/6/08 at 7:19pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by boykster View Post

Its not what you want to hear, but the only way to really figure out which stripe size is going to work "best" for you, is to try it out. I have a 9500S-12 card and I initially built my array with a 64k stripe size. I recently added a couple drives and changed the stripe size to 256k and I'm getting much better throughput on my read speeds. I also tweaked some of the i/o settings on the OS (Fedora 9) so the combination made a big difference.

As for the slowness of the online migration - yep, it took my array about 48 hours to expand. It was about 1% an hour for the first 25% or so, then it picked up speed. Its slow, but it works very well. You can speed up the process a bit by going to the 'controller settings' page of the 'management' menu and setting the 'rebuild/migrate rate' to 'faster rebuild'. For general performance, you should set that and the verify rate to 'faster i/o' and make sure you enable write cache - especially if you have a BBU.

If MBR works for you, then go for it and use it. The filesystem tools in linux don't support >2Tb with MBR at all, and you have to use an approach similar to what miimura outlined using LVM. I chose to build a single natively supported large drive using GPT so I wouldn't have that hassle.


So whether I can have a volume with MBR and be go over 2TB is dependent on the OS? Some can and some can't?
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post #16 of 50
7/6/08 at 7:25pm
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=965098
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post #17 of 50
7/7/08 at 9:45pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone View Post

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=965098

Thanks for the link. It was quite helpful in explaining the 2TB limit and the impact of MBR and GPT on that. I will report back when the migration has completed- it's only at 48% now. However, I do have one other question: how do I the email feature working? It'd be nice if the machine could actually email me warnings and other notifications. It keeps telling me "(0x0C:0x000E): Failed to connect to mail server : Failed to send test message" when I try to send a test message. I am using my Gmail account with this. I think it might be due to the fact that I didn't specify encryption as I didn't see a place to do that. Does anyone know how I might remedy this? Thanks a lot
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post #18 of 50
7/8/08 at 4:19am
I presume that you have a stand alone system and it is not used in a server configuration. Just use the 3Ware WinAVAlarm that is included in your software. It starts up on boot and gives you a visual and audible popup alarm for “Information, Warnings and Errors” when they occur. The e-mail system is mainly for someone that is at a different computer and it can notify that person as soon as possible to a problem that may have occurred.
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post #19 of 50
7/8/08 at 7:19pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rembrandt1 View Post

I presume that you have a stand alone system and it is not used in a server configuration. Just use the 3Ware WinAVAlarm that is included in your software. It starts up on boot and gives you a visual and audible popup alarm for Information, Warnings and Errors when they occur. The e-mail system is mainly for someone that is at a different computer and it can notify that person as soon as possible to a problem that may have occurred.

Well, actually, it's sort of a server. I don't have a monitor, keyboard, or mouse attached to it. I use the remote desktop feature to connect to it. However, that's not my main concern right now. The card just finished migrating, but I only see 1.81TB - same as the original size. I don't think it's due to the 2TB size limitation since it's only at 1.8TB. I just can't get it to recognize the other 1tb of storage. The raid card reports 2.73TB under unit info.
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post #20 of 50
7/8/08 at 10:12pm
Unmount the existing volume, and then using the 3dm web interface, remove the newly migrated unit and then rescan the controller. That should update what is being exported to the OS.

That won't grow the partition and filesystem either, simply grow the physical disk that the OS can see. You'll have to either grow the partition yourself, or add a new one in the empty space.

Here is a pdf from 3ware outlining what I just posted.
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post #21 of 50
7/8/08 at 11:02pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks a lot for the reply. I just found the info you gave me. However, even though the OS recognizes the total capacity to to be 2.73TB, it still can't read the other 700GB or so. This is probably due to the MBR limitation discussed earlier. But still, must I reformat the drive before it will recognize that additional 700GB? I read that I could use auto-carving to carve the volume into chunks less than 2TB and emerged them in Windows under spanned volume. Does this really work? Also, I enable auto carving and nothing seems to have happened.
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post #22 of 50
7/8/08 at 11:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hehe299792458 View Post

Thanks a lot for the reply. I just found the info you gave me. However, even though the OS recognizes the total capacity to to be 2.73TB, it still can't read the other 700GB or so. This is probably due to the MBR limitation discussed earlier. But still, must I reformat the drive before it will recognize that additional 700GB? I read that I could use auto-carving to carve the volume into chunks less than 2TB and emerged them in Windows under spanned volume. Does this really work? Also, I enable auto carving and nothing seems to have happened.

What do you see in Disk Management? Actually, not having used Vista, is it still called that?

- Mike
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post #23 of 50
7/9/08 at 12:49am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by miimura View Post

What do you see in Disk Management? Actually, not having used Vista, is it still called that?

- Mike

this
LL
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post #24 of 50
7/9/08 at 1:04am
Yes you must reformat the drive otherwise you will loose the 700MB. Using Disk Management in Windows, create a partition at a max of 2TB. After it formats the partition it will see the other 700MB as unused space. Then you can format that space for use. That is why 3Ware has the 2TB carving feature so Windows will see the 2TB and the 700MB as two different partitions at the same time and both ready to be formatted.

Or recreate the array using the carving feature. Personally, that is what I would do.
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post #25 of 50
7/9/08 at 1:31am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rembrandt1 View Post

Yes you must reformat the drive otherwise you will loose the 700MB. Using Disk Management in Windows, create a partition at a max of 2TB. After it formats the partition it will see the other 700MB as unused space. Then you can format that space for use. That is why 3Ware has the 2TB carving feature so Windows will see the 2TB and the 700MB as two different partitions at the same time and both ready to be formatted.

Or recreate the array using the carving feature. Personally, that is what I would do.

Well, I told 3dm2 to carve the array into 1.5TB pieces (just to be sure), but nothing happened. Is there something I need to do besides clicking the submit button next to it?

EDIT: I did enable "auto carving" in case anyone wonders.
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post #26 of 50
7/9/08 at 1:56pm
Thread Starter 
anyone?
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post #27 of 50
7/9/08 at 3:41pm
Sorry, I have no idea. I've never had to use the carving feature as I'm using linux with XFS and both support partitions > 2Tb. I also was able to use the OCE to grow my array from 2Tb to 4Tb and expanded the partition and filesystem successfully as well.
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post #28 of 50
7/9/08 at 4:30pm
Windows should see two 1.5TB unused spaces. If it does not see them, I have no idea what to tell you. It always has worked for my 3Ware controllers and Windows always see them on the next reboot.

What browser and version are you using? I have found that I can only use Firefox 2.x to get into the Management/Maintenance section of 3DM2 to create or change a volume.
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post #29 of 50
7/9/08 at 4:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hehe299792458 View Post

Well, I told 3dm2 to carve the array into 1.5TB pieces (just to be sure), but nothing happened. Is there something I need to do besides clicking the submit button next to it?

EDIT: I did enable "auto carving" in case anyone wonders.

OK. First, I would delete the "New Volume". It's only 185GB, so you can easily empty it somewhere else. Next, right click on Disk 1 and select "Convert to Dynamic Disk..." When that finishes, right click on MediaDrive and select "Extend Volume". That should add all the unallocated space to the existing file system in the MediaDrive partition. You may have to do this for each carved chunk. Disk 2 below was extended in this manner in XP Pro after the array was expanded with OCE. For small file systems like the one shown below, I usually use Partition Magic and leave it as Basic Disk, but this time I was too lazy and just did the Extend. Also, I've heard Vista can shrink partitions, so it can probably extend them too, up to the carve size. Then you'll still need to Extend into the next carve chunk.



Good Luck,

- Mike
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post #30 of 50
7/9/08 at 7:01pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by miimura View Post

OK. First, I would delete the "New Volume". It's only 185GB, so you can easily empty it somewhere else. Next, right click on Disk 1 and select "Convert to Dynamic Disk..." When that finishes, right click on MediaDrive and select "Extend Volume". That should add all the unallocated space to the existing file system in the MediaDrive partition. You may have to do this for each carved chunk. Disk 2 below was extended in this manner in XP Pro after the array was expanded with OCE. For small file systems like the one shown below, I usually use Partition Magic and leave it as Basic Disk, but this time I was too lazy and just did the Extend. Also, I've heard Vista can shrink partitions, so it can probably extend them too, up to the carve size. Then you'll still need to Extend into the next carve chunk.



Good Luck,

- Mike

Thanks for the reply. I wanted to do that, but the only problem is the "convert to dynamic disk" option is greyed out.
LL
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