Exteremly Slow RAID Rebuild/Verify

[animedreamer]

I recently installed a HighPoint RocketRAID 2220 RAID controller in our
IBM server. I am very concerned that something is either misconfigured
or not performing as intended. When I rebuilt the array, it took
around 60 hours to complete. I am not very familiar with RAID arrays,
but from what I have read, this is an inordinate amount of time for an
array to rebuild itself. Furthermore, I am now in the process of
running a verify process (after the array has been in use for about 2
weeks) and this is taking about 3 hours to complete. I sent an e-mail
to HighPoint and they suggested I ensure the BIOS is current and the
drivers are current. I downloaded the latest copy of the drivers, but
the O/S (Windows 2000 Server) will not allow me to install them. It
keeps telling me there is already a valid copy of the drivers installed
despite the fact I am trying to install newer drivers. They also told
me to ensure the caching was enabled. I have enabled the read ahead
caching, but not the write caching. We use the server for our database
applications and I have read it is not a good idea to enable write
caching if you are hosting databases on the RAID array. Should I be
concerned about the sluggish performance of this controller, or am I
just worrying too much? Thanks.

-Vincent

 

[Arno Wagner]

I recently installed a HighPoint RocketRAID 2220 RAID controller in our
IBM server. I am very concerned that something is either misconfigured
or not performing as intended. When I rebuilt the array, it took
around 60 hours to complete. I am not very familiar with RAID arrays,
but from what I have read, this is an inordinate amount of time for an
array to rebuild itself. Furthermore, I am now in the process of
running a verify process (after the array has been in use for about 2
weeks) and this is taking about 3 hours to complete. I sent an e-mail
to HighPoint and they suggested I ensure the BIOS is current and the
drivers are current. I downloaded the latest copy of the drivers, but
the O/S (Windows 2000 Server) will not allow me to install them. It
keeps telling me there is already a valid copy of the drivers installed
despite the fact I am trying to install newer drivers. They also told
me to ensure the caching was enabled. I have enabled the read ahead
caching, but not the write caching. We use the server for our database
applications and I have read it is not a good idea to enable write
caching if you are hosting databases on the RAID array. Should I be
concerned about the sluggish performance of this controller, or am I
just worrying too much? Thanks.

I don't know whether this is revant, but I had a similar experience
once with Linux software RAID5 and XFS. The array started its
automatic rebuild on start-up, but at the same time a filesystem
chsck was triggerd. Things got so slow te rebuild would have taken
a month or two. While this is different technoloy to what you
are using, there may be a similar problem here: Accesses to the
disk that interfere with the rebuild process and slow it down
to a crawl. Were you doing anything on the array, while it
was rebuilding?

If the array was completely idle while you observed the slow
performance, then I think you should worry and really find out,
what the problem is.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I don't know whether this is revant, but I had a similar experience
once with Linux software RAID5 and XFS. The array started its
automatic rebuild on start-up, but at the same time a filesystem
chsck was triggerd. Things got so slow te rebuild would have taken
a month or two. While this is different technoloy to what you
are using, there may be a similar problem here: Accesses to the
disk that interfere with the rebuild process and slow it down
to a crawl. Were you doing anything on the array, while it
was rebuilding?

If the array was completely idle while you observed the slow performance,

Yes, completely idle could be counted as extreme slow performance.
Good one, Arnie.