Re: SATA drives performance

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Richard Neill <rn214(at)cam(dot)ac(dot)uk> wrote:
>
>
> Scott Marlowe wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Richard Neill <rn214(at)cam(dot)ac(dot)uk> wrote:
>>>
>>> Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
>>>>
>>>> This isn't true.  IBMs IPS series controllers can the checked and
>>>> configured via the ipssend utility that works very well in 2.6.x LINUX.
>>>>
>>> Unfortunately, what we got (in the IBM) was the garbage ServeRaid 8kl
>>> card.
>>> This one is atrocious - it shipped with a hideous firmware bug. And there
>>> is
>>> no way to bypass it.
>>>
>> Can you replace the IBM RAID controller with some other controller?
>> Even just a simple 4 or 8 port SATA card with no RAID capability would
>> be better than something that locks up.
>
> A replacement would have been nice, however the 8kl is very tightly
> integrated with the motherboard and the backplane. We'd have had to buy a
> PCI-X card, and then get out the soldering iron to fix the cables.
>
> To be fair, the 8kl is now working OK; also there was a note in the box
> mentioning that firmware updates should be applied if available. What I
> found unbelievable was that IBM shipped the server to me in a state with
> known crashing firmware (a sufficiently bad bug imho to merit a product
> recall), and hadn't bothered to flash it themselves in the factory. Usually
> BIOS updates are only applied by the end user if there is a specific issue
> to fix, and if the product line has been out for years, but that particular
> server was only assembled 3 weeks ago, why would one expect a company of
> IBM's standing to ship it in that state.

It does kind of knock the stuffing out of the argument that buying
from the big vendors ensures good hardware experiences. I've had
similar problems from all the big vendors in the past. I can't
imagine getting treated that way by my current supplied. It's one
thing for some obscure bug in a particular ubuntu kernel to interact
poorly with a piece of equipment, but when a hardware RAID controller
arrives in a basically broken state, that's inexcusable. It's really
not too much to expect working hardware on arrival.