HP Storage Works 2000 sa and fc G2 performance specs

The 4 SAS RAID controllers each connected to 2 MSA60 each with 12 15K disk is a projection.

Of course, the ProLiant DL785G5 has already measured 7GB/s over 6 P800 controlllers from a SQL Server table scan. (close 9GB/s from a pure IO test, something like IOmeter).

I am projecting down from a measured result, not up based on what a single controller can do and .

My last measurement on system with a good direct-attach storage did 3.2GB over 4 SAS RAID controller, or 800MB/s per adapter.

This was a Xeon 7400 generation system, PCI-E gen 1 (2.5Gbps) and SAS 3Gbps. Two of the 4 adapters were in x8 slots and 2 in x4.

The system had 4 x8 slots, but each pair shared one x8 uplink bandwidth.

The reason I am projecting for 4 controllers is that of the Xeon 5400 series systems (on the 5000P/X chipset) and the Xeon 7400 series with the 7300 chipset, no systems had 4 x8 PCI-E slots (with dedicated bandwidth). Intel did have 5400 chipset for the 5400 series, but the major vendors did not have system based on it. SuperMicro did, but was not inclined to build another system from scratch.

Now the 2-way Dell PowerEdge T710 does have 4 x8 PCI-E Gen 2 slots. The HP ProLiant DL370G6 has 2 x16, 2x8 (1 used for NICs) and 6 x4 slots, also PCI-E Gen2.

If you have a PCI-E Gen 2 SAS RAID controller, you should be able to get 1.6GB/sec on a x4 slot.

Of course, I cannot afford 8 MSA 60, each with 12 drives (about $56K?) so I stated the 4-6GB/sec target to get some one to buy the equipment.

So, will you get 4GB/s on 4 MSA2000fc with 192 drives?

The HP data says one pair of MSA2000fc with 96 drives could do 1300MB/s tested with 4 hosts. It also states "results cannot be expected with a single host" but I am inclined to disagree because I have set up single host with heavy IO many times. And so do all the other benchmark people.

So do you have 4 MSA2000fc controller pairs, or 2 pairs?

Expect only 2600MB/s from 2 pairs.

In direct attach, I can get the full disk sequential transfer rate from a single disk (125-150MB/s) and I can saturate the x4 SAS channel with 12 disks.

In a SAN, I typically see about 10MB/sec per disk. Meaning 192 disks should do 1900MB/sec. My understanding is 20-30MB/sec per disk is possible, but requires tuning.

You are having trouble? I just tried doing the Microsoft Fast Track Data Warehouse with the MSA 2000 G2 fc version. We had huge difficulties getting it setup. Turns out there was a partially dead (LED?) module in the switch and yet the MSA reported seeing the port/host. The FTDW document did not mention installing the QLogic SanSurfer or Emulex HBAnywhere software which would tell you all this quickly. Also, the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 MPIO module was a pain, had to unistall and reinstall. Perhaps Luke Youngblood can help, but you might contact him directly.