Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems

2011-08-06 Thread Jason J. W. Williams
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

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On Aug 6, 2011, at 10:45, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk  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.
> 
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Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems

2011-08-06 Thread Jason J. W. Williams
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  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
>
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Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems

2011-08-06 Thread Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk
> 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.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems

2011-08-08 Thread Gregory Youngblood

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
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Re: [zfs-discuss] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems

2011-08-08 Thread Pasi Kärkkäinen
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

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