Poor write performance with HP ProLiant ML 150 Gen9

Question

Transferring large files from one drive (USB or SATA to RAID) in my HP ProLiant ML150 Gen9 is slow. At the beginning we were thinking about the B140i controller - a pseudo-raid controller without any memory cache.

This is the original B140i performance and the improvement after upgrading to smart array p440/4gbFWC.

Raid configuration is RAID 10 with 4 x SSD 500GB drives on both cases.

Although improved, the problem was still present: When transferring large files, speed drops dramatically after a couple of minutes, from 400 MB /S and remains at 6-7 MB/s till the end of the transfer:

I tried without success:

Clean install of Windows 2012R2
Clean install of Windows 2019
Upgraded all firmware and drivers of using the latest ProLiant Service Pack

This is perfomance while copying a file from P440/4GB volume to the same volume:

enter image description here

Now machine is running 3 VM with only 18% of free memory. Older tests was done without any VM running.

Please add details about your server hardware and raid config/layout — shodanshok, Jul 29 '19 at 17:26
No antivirus on windows 2012r2 and disabled on windows 2019. — Jordi Auladell, Jul 30 '19 at 04:30

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 23 '20 at 19:40

0

In HP Smart Storage Administrator: Active Writing Cache on the drive

edited Oct 23 '20 at 19:40

Stuggi

3,506
4
19
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answered Oct 22 '20 at 22:46

nako

1

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 31 '21 at 09:33

The effect you're seeing on write - fast at first and then breaking in - is Windows's write cache. It fills available memory (fast) and when that's exhausted you see the real hardware speed.

RAID controllers without cache suck at writing, especially the HPE ones. On-board (host) RAID is really bad but low-end E-type controllers aren't really that much better.

Either switch the controller to AHCI and build your RAID in Windows or - much better - get a decent P-type RAID controller with cache and battery module (the battery is required/recommended to activate write-behind caching).

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 31 '21 at 12:53

I set the B140 to AHCI and I connected a low end SSD to its SATA port.

Look at this:

This is the behaviour when try to copy 76GB file from a USB 3.0 SSD to the SSD connected to the AHCI B140i:

USB3.0 to B140i ahci mode

This one is when I copy the file from B140i AHCI MODE to P440/4GB RAID 10:

b140I TO P440/4GB

The only way to get the full performance transfer is to use non-RAID drives. Any other option has an annoying drop of speed. It doesn't matter which direction:

from USB3.0 to P440/4GB RAID --> SPEED DROP.
from P440/4GB to USB3.0 --> SPEED DROP.
from USB3.0 to B140i RAID MODE --> SPEED DROP.
from B140I (AHCI or RAID) to P440/4GB --> SPEED DROP.

5. from USB3.0 to B140i AHCI --> SUCCESFUL PERFORMANCE.

Poor write performance with HP ProLiant ML 150 Gen9

3 Answers3