Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems
On Aug 6, 2011, at 9:56 AM, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote: In my experience, SATA drives behind SAS expanders just don't work. They fail in the manner you describe, sooner or later. Use SAS and be happy. Funny thing is Hitachi and Seagate drives work stably, whereas WD drives tend to fail rather quickly Vennlige hilsener / Best regards Might this be the SATA drives taking too long to reallocate bad sectors? This is a common problem desktop drives have, they will stop and basically focus on reallocating the bad sector as long as it takes, which causes the raid setup to time out the operation and flag the drive as failed. The enterprise sata drives, typically the same as the high performing desktop drive, only they have a short timeout on how long they are allowed to try and reallocate a bad sector so they don't hit the failed drive timeout. Some drive firmwares, such as older WD blacks if memory serves, had the ability to be forced to behave like the enterprise drive, but WD updated the firmware so this is longer possible. This is why you see SATA drives that typically have almost identical specs, but one will be $69 and the other $139 - the former is a desktop model while the latter is an enterprise or raid specific model. I believe it's called different things by different brands: TLER, ERC, and CCTL (?). Greg ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems
On Sat, Aug 06, 2011 at 07:45:31PM +0200, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote: Might this be the SATA drives taking too long to reallocate bad sectors? This is a common problem desktop drives have, they will stop and basically focus on reallocating the bad sector as long as it takes, which causes the raid setup to time out the operation and flag the drive as failed. The enterprise sata drives, typically the same as the high performing desktop drive, only they have a short timeout on how long they are allowed to try and reallocate a bad sector so they don't hit the failed drive timeout. Some drive firmwares, such as older WD blacks if memory serves, had the ability to be forced to behave like the enterprise drive, but WD updated the firmware so this is longer possible. This is why you see SATA drives that typically have almost identical specs, but one will be $69 and the other $139 - the former is a desktop model while the latter is an enterprise or raid specific model. I believe it's called different things by different brands: TLER, ERC, and CCTL (?). I doubt this is about the lack of TLER et al. Some, or most, of the drives ditched by ZFS have shown to be quite good indeed. I guess this is a WD vs Intel SAS expanders issue What exact chassis / backplane / SAS-expander is that? (with Intel SAS expander). -- Pasi ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems
WD's drives have gotten better the last few years but their quality is still not very good. I doubt they test their drives extensively for heavy duty server configs, particularly since you don't see them inside any of the major server manufactures' boxes. Hitachi in particular does well in mass storage configs. -J Sent via iPhone Is your email Premiere? On Aug 6, 2011, at 10:45, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk r...@karlsbakk.net wrote: Hi all We have a few servers with WD Black (and some green) drives on Super Micro systems. We've seen both drives work well with direct attach, but with LSI controllers and Super Micro's SAS expanders, well, that's another story. With those SAS expanders, we've seen numerous drives being kicked out and flagged as bad during high load (typically scrub/resilver). We have not seen this on the units we have with Hitachi or Seagate drives. After a drive is kicked out, we run a test on it, using WDs tool, and in many (or most) cases, we find the drive being error free. We've seen these issues on several machines, so hardware failure seem not to be the case. Have anyone here used WD drives with LSI controllers (3801/3081/9211) with Super Micro machines? Any success stories? Vennlige hilsener / Best regards roy -- Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk (+47) 97542685 r...@karlsbakk.net http://blogg.karlsbakk.net/ -- I all pedagogikk er det essensielt at pensum presenteres intelligibelt. Det er et elementært imperativ for alle pedagoger å unngå eksessiv anvendelse av idiomer med fremmed opprinnelse. I de fleste tilfeller eksisterer adekvate og relevante synonymer på norsk. ___ OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list openindiana-disc...@openindiana.org http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems
This might be related to your issue: http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2010/09/western-digital-re3-series-sata-drives.html On Saturday, August 6, 2011, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk r...@karlsbakk.net wrote: In my experience, SATA drives behind SAS expanders just don't work. They fail in the manner you describe, sooner or later. Use SAS and be happy. Funny thing is Hitachi and Seagate drives work stably, whereas WD drives tend to fail rather quickly Vennlige hilsener / Best regards roy -- Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk (+47) 97542685 r...@karlsbakk.net http://blogg.karlsbakk.net/ -- I all pedagogikk er det essensielt at pensum presenteres intelligibelt. Det er et elementært imperativ for alle pedagoger å unngå eksessiv anvendelse av idiomer med fremmed opprinnelse. I de fleste tilfeller eksisterer adekvate og relevante synonymer på norsk. ___ OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list openindiana-disc...@openindiana.org http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems
Might this be the SATA drives taking too long to reallocate bad sectors? This is a common problem desktop drives have, they will stop and basically focus on reallocating the bad sector as long as it takes, which causes the raid setup to time out the operation and flag the drive as failed. The enterprise sata drives, typically the same as the high performing desktop drive, only they have a short timeout on how long they are allowed to try and reallocate a bad sector so they don't hit the failed drive timeout. Some drive firmwares, such as older WD blacks if memory serves, had the ability to be forced to behave like the enterprise drive, but WD updated the firmware so this is longer possible. This is why you see SATA drives that typically have almost identical specs, but one will be $69 and the other $139 - the former is a desktop model while the latter is an enterprise or raid specific model. I believe it's called different things by different brands: TLER, ERC, and CCTL (?). I doubt this is about the lack of TLER et al. Some, or most, of the drives ditched by ZFS have shown to be quite good indeed. I guess this is a WD vs Intel SAS expanders issue Vennlige hilsener / Best regards roy -- Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk (+47) 97542685 r...@karlsbakk.net http://blogg.karlsbakk.net/ -- I all pedagogikk er det essensielt at pensum presenteres intelligibelt. Det er et elementært imperativ for alle pedagoger å unngå eksessiv anvendelse av idiomer med fremmed opprinnelse. I de fleste tilfeller eksisterer adekvate og relevante synonymer på norsk. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
