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HP P410i Raid Controller does not like SSD drives
This is for the hardware guys, I have installed an SSD drive to a P410i raid controller and the I/O is awful does not gets more than 61MB/s where this should be around 500MB/s, I have changed a lot of settings on the controller, disable cache and nothing makes any difference. I know that HP is proprietary and will work only with HP SSD drives, I would like some suggestion in 3rd party controllers like Adaptec or SLI what should be better, to replace the P401i.
Comments
What I'm more interested in is why you need a controller in the first place?
SSD + software RAID is sufficient.
Thank you @Ishaq the SSD is in a bay connected on the backplane and thus connected to the raid controller. replacing the controller should be easy once installed in a PCI raise card, I don't know if there is any SATA controller integrated on the MB.
Using P410 with SSDs is a bad idea. That controller is very old and not designed to be used with SSDs, neither does it support them. We have some LSI controllers with HP DL G6 and they work fine. Keep in mind that even if you can attach the storage directly to the MB, it's likely to be SATA 3gbps, limiting the newer SSDs in terms of speeds.
May be firmware update will help?
I have HP DL380G6 with P410i, and a couple of consumer-grade plextor PX-256M5 SSD-s, ESXi 5.5 and MSSQL BD, and it works good, similar to single such SSD in desktop pc.
Thank you @AlexBarakov this is a DL G7 would you know what LSI model are you using?
P410 has only SATA2, which is 3Gbit. To get more than 250MB/s you need to use SAS2 SSDs which can use up to 6Gbit, and that bi-directional.
Your desktop sucks majorly if it has only 3Gbit SATA ports.
2 ports for CD drives, SATA1 or SATA2 depending on model.
Anything 8 port (or 4 port., single backplane models) with SATA3 works, so 200x and 300x based controllers, RAID availability depends on model.
You want, as the server only has PCIe 2.0, at least 8 lanes used (totals to 40Gbit or 5Gbit per SSD).
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B007V8S0HY
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00NNPL4X6
I think this controller does raid1+0 by default on raid1 array so it explains why i still get 500mb+ read on raid1 array.
Also under real workload i really doubt that there will be any difference between sata2 and sata3, everything will be limited by ssd performance with small block random read/write.
The p410 is literally the evilest raid card in the known universe, burn it with extream prejudice.
If you decide to use it anyway, please 100% expect to lose all data within 18 months and reminded of this post when it happens.
The feature set is absolutely rubbish, performance is absolutely terrible with the longevity of a fruit fly.
it goes straight there
... you... what? Obviously there is, look alone at the protocol changes that are specific implemented for SSDs, SATA2 was still designed for HDDs.
You also basically give away free money to the SSD manufacturer and waste the entire SLC/MLC cache on the SSD, if any (eg. all 3D/TLC Sandisk SSDs).
The P410(i) is from a time where SSDs did not even exist, and if you had some they used SAS - which is also what HP sold you, and that ideally with a P8xx then.
That would be horrible, as you essentially would partition the SSD each in two parts and then rely on SATA still - on SAS this MIGHT make some sense as it can read and write at the same time, but SATA cannot do that.
A RAID1, in normal config, will always read from 2+ disks, and thus get 500MB/s. You can however only write to one (after the HP cache which might be faster but needs battery) which is likely much more issue.
I have a DL160 - G6 in production that i have run for around 3 years that the raid never failed on but on the other scale one of my DL380-G7 literally 2 days ago took a shit on the raid and i lost 2 drives in my raid 5 ....
yes with a p410 it's not if it is when!
I had I think 5 of them simultaneously drop 3 drives from a 4 drive raid 10, obviously, anything can and will fail, but when a p410 fails.... it takes your data with it.
I used to work for HP, they used dell for production DC's, no further questions required.
100% agree with this statement.
And don't think it's because you're using mismatched drives; this still happens in HP servers with HP-branded drives with HP firmware installed on the drives.
Just curious, which HP server and drive model that you seen the drive drop?
Sry for digging out that old thread but I have exactly the same problem.
I've got a DL380G6 with a Samsung SSD 850 EVO in it running Windows Server 2016. But Windows thinks its an HDD and in the device manager it is listed as "HP Logical Volume SCSI Disk Device". So the performance is poor. I have 70 MB/sec read speed and I cannot enable the write cache in Windows.
Did I configure anything wrong ? The SSD is installed in the Front Bay and I do not have a additional write cache module neither do I have a battery for the integrated controller?
Do you have the BBWU unit installed?
Because there is no additional battery or expansion card, i assume that it is just the plain p410i on the mainboard.
But what is a BBWU unit?
Hi Muschek12, Have you installed the HP Array configuration Utility on the Host with the 850 EVO? https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?swItemId=MTX_4effd70562304a50b3be5c4b96
If not install it, select the controller and then Enable the physical drive write cache. That got my Kingston SSDs up to ~220MB/s. That said, it's an old controller and we are starting to see it cause issues. It looks like a bunch of blocks are being retired on the drives. Mutliple blades are starting to exhibit the issues.
Wet old controller. Not recommended.