Re: HBA vs caching Raid controller

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> - The pattern is mainly write centric, so write latency is
>   probably the real factor
> - The HDD OSDs behind the raid controllers can cache / reorder
>   writes and reduce seeks potentially

OK that makes sense.

Unfortunately, re-ordering HDD writes without a battery backup is kind
of dangerous -- writes need to happen in order or the filesystem will
punish you when you least expect it.  This is the whole point of the
battery backup - to make sure that out-of-order writes get written to
disk even if there is a power loss in the middle of writing the
controller-write-cache data in an HDD-optimized order.

Your use case is ideal for an SSD-based WAL -- though it may be
difficult to beat the cost of H800s these days.


> In this context: is anyone here using HBAs with battery
> backed cache, and if yes, which controllers do you tend to use?

I almost always use MegaRAID-based controllers (such as the H800).


Good luck,
Mark


On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 2:28 PM Nico Schottelius
<nico.schottelius@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> Mark Lehrer <lehrer@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> >> One server has LSI SAS3008 [0] instead of the Perc H800,
> >> which comes with 512MB RAM + BBU. On most servers latencies are around
> >> 4-12ms (average 6ms), on the system with the LSI controller we see
> >> 20-60ms (average 30ms) latency.
> >
> > Are these reads, writes, or a mixed workload?  I would expect an
> > improvement in writes, but 512MB of cache isn't likely to help much on
> > reads with such a large data set.
>
> It's mostly write (~20MB/s), little read (1-5 MB/s) work load. This is
> probably due to many people using this storage for backup.
>
> > Just as a test, you could removing the battery on one of the H800s to
> > disable the write cache -- or else disable write caching with megaraid
> > or equivalent.
>
> That is certainly an interesting idea - and rereading your message and
> my statement above might actually explain the behaviour:
>
> - The pattern is mainly write centric, so write latency is probably the
>   real factor
> - The HDD OSDs behind the raid controllers can cache / reorder writes
>   and reduce seeks potentially
>
> So while "a raid controller" per se does probably not improve or reduce
> speed for ceph, "a (disk/raid) controller with a battery backed cache",
> might actually.
>
> In this context: is anyone here using HBAs with battery backed cache,
> and if yes, which controllers do you tend to use?
>
> Nico
>
>
> --
> Sustainable and modern Infrastructures by ungleich.ch
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