My Dream System (I think)

[joeschmuck]

P.S. You keep mentioning this UPSMON driver , but I am not sure that I know what that driver is for and what has to do with the raid card ?

The driver is for connectivity to a USB connected UPS. ESXi does not have this built in but it does support Ethernet based UPS units. So this way when I have a power failure, the UPS signals ESXi, or really in my case it's a pass-thru to FreeNAS and FreeNAS is the Master UPS controller and it signals ESXi to shut things down. It's a round about way to get from point A to point B but it works. If you have another way to do this, I'm all ears.

 

[Black Ninja]

I suspect that is the case
It's just cause you keep mentioning this UPSMON with the relations with the raid card and I got little confused: Why you have to remove that in order to install lsiprovider driver?! What one has to do with the other ?

 

[joeschmuck]

The UPSMON driver is not a bonafide ESXi driver and has some trust issues. I have no idea why the developer can't fix these issues but to date they have not. I can override the checks when I install the lsiprovider or any other software I add but I don't think it's smart to override these checks. Uninstalling is easy to do and I'm not doing this kind of work everyday. So the only reason it was mentioned is because it's an extra step that I specifically have to do.

 

[joeschmuck]

Time to order me another Dream System: http://www.lightwerkz.net/index.php...l-kit/bi-xenon-morimoto-mini-stage-3-d2s.html

This is for my truck. The lenses are fogging over due to the UV light damage. Sure I could sand them and put on a UV clear coat but what's the fun in that? Plus these new lights will allow me to see a lot further, or that is the idea, without blinding on-comming drivers. I'll fix my OEM lights after the fact and maybe I could sell them on E-Bay for a few hundred bucks. OEM's are very expensive. So this is my next project and is sure to be fun.

 

[Black Ninja]

Ooooo... Now I see what is going on. I wouldn't have ever guess it.
Isn't this command -no sig check has something to do with uncertified drivers , I mean overwriting this issue on install ?! I am not quite sure here.

 

[Black Ninja]

Time to order me another Dream System: http://www.lightwerkz.net/index.php...l-kit/bi-xenon-morimoto-mini-stage-3-d2s.html

This is for my truck. The lenses are fogging over due to the UV light damage. Sure I could sand them and put on a UV clear coat but what's the fun in that? Plus these new lights will allow me to see a lot further, or that is the idea, without blinding on-comming drivers. I'll fix my OEM lights after the fact and maybe I could sell them on E-Bay for a few hundred bucks. OEM's are very expensive. So this is my next project and is sure to be fun.

Crazy joeshmuck
But it will be fun indeed !

 

[joeschmuck]

What will drive my wife nuts is the fact that I will have to put a brand new headlight into the kitchen oven and heat it up so I can take the lens off and then retrofit the headlamp assembly. It's a bit of work but should be all done in a single weekend, and that is taking my sweet time.

 

[Black Ninja]

I know "the kitchen" problem )
It's always a battle when kitchen need to be used for "alternative" purposes, followed always by a stict dead lines how long "this stuff" can stay there before wife takes control back over the kitchen.

 

[Black Ninja]

Here is as update:
I did install "megaraid" driver after the "lsi provider" just for testing purposes, not cause I need it to, and performance didn't drop this time. Go figure ?! Does is matter in which order you install them ? or upgrading the firmware to the lastest one and reinstall from scratch starting with lsi provider I don't know. But don't matter as long as it work fine either way.

 

[joeschmuck]

Did you reboot? Something is off. Are you testing the correct drive? I'm curious what changed.

Didn't you say that you upgraded the RAID card firmware from the VM?

 

[Black Ninja]

Did you reboot?

I reboot religiously, especially in cases like this. Also esxi will tell you immediately that you need to reboot for the changes to take effect.

Something is off

That's absolutely true.

Are you testing the correct drive?

6 old 2TB 7200rpm are configured in RAID10 in 1 virtual drive, so you can't miss if you only have one drive.

Didn't you say that you upgraded the RAID card firmware from the VM?

Yes I did. And that worked so easy and smooth I can't believe it. I am use too the old DOS boot flash utility routine I always did with HBA , and I will probably still do it that way on HBA since I know it works and have already pre-made boot disk with the various firmware included, but I wanted to try from Windows GUI to see what will happen and it did work as easy as flashing a SSD firmware from GUI software.

I'm curious what changed.

Me too, but perhaps is not something WE can tell. This is what I know is different on my end:
1.Card firmware is newer (does it matter I don't know)
2.Driver install order is different - I install lsi-provider first and them megaraid driver.

The conclusion is that there is way to make it work with drivers installed. So at least they don't slow down the performance any further. Now it's just the esxi itself. But that is something I don't think I'll get at answer to easy, but since I tested let me show you what the test looks like:

The virtual drive is the same (6 disk in raid10) ones is testes with Windows (native install) and then with ESXI 5.5 from VM (Windows)

 

[joeschmuck]

For your RAID card, what firmware did you upgrade it to? Maybe that was the trick, unless you just reflashed it with the same firmware. Here is a screen capture of the firmware on my card.

 

[Black Ninja]

I upgrade to the lastest firmware: 12.15.0-0239
The old firmware was 12.12.0.0090.

But the thing is that our cards are very different type. Mine is 9261-8i which is megaraid, yours is like 9211-8i which is like HBA/RAID card. I do have 9211 cards which I flash like you did with older firmware P16 in IT mode (p16), while yours is P20 in (IR mode). So we can't use the firmware for comparison.

When did you notice the slow down on your setup occur ? Do you have any Crystalmark number like before and after to show ?

 

[joeschmuck]

I've deleted all my screen captures of CrystalMark. I think my previous posting capture what caused the slowdown, I'd have to go read them again to be sure.

So, we are not using the same hardware so the differences could be what is allowing you to enjoy the better speed. I did flash mine with LSI firmware vice the Dell variant, maybe the Dell version would work better but for now, I think I'm good.

 

[Black Ninja]

I've deleted all my screen captures of CrystalMark. I think my previous posting capture what caused the slowdown, I'd have to go read them again to be sure.

These are important to keep. Can't do proper investigation of a problem without being able to compare results. Can you even tell what exactly made you think it was a slow down ? Did it just felt slow , or you test speed. Write or Read speed is also very important when SSD are involved.

I did flash mine with LSI firmware vice the Dell variant, maybe the Dell version would work better but for now, I think I'm good.

You know what this is a very good thinking. I don't have personal exp. with this case but I think I read somewhere about it. But remember is important to record the results every step of the way , in order to know if you are making any difference and when. I am sure you know all that, but I had to say it :)

 

[Black Ninja]

I am also thinking.... the speeds are different between controllers and drives setup , but the "toll" that ESXI take, for being virtulized shouldn't be so different. I don't understand why it would eat the half of the speed compared to bare metal (windows native) ? With SSDs the results are even crazier - showing virtual drive being faster that it is in native Windows with onboard sata. My head starts boiling again

 

[joeschmuck]

My test results are here: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/my-dream-system-i-think.41072/page-20#post-302439

I'll run some other benchmarks to show you what I have now, but that will have to wait for the morning.

 

[Black Ninja]

Sure, take your time. I have a new router to build this weekend so ESXI will be back on the table after that.

 

[joeschmuck]

Here are my speed testing results within a clean Windows 7 64-bit environment on ESXi. No drivers are installed except the default ESXi drivers. The testing was done using ATTO running with default settings, Crystal Diskmark running default settings, and lastly Crystal Diskmark running the same settings as your setup. You can see that the speeds are not too bad but I'm not sure if this is a respectable speed or if I can get a lot more out of it. I'd like to see the write speed bump up a bit.

 

[Black Ninja]

This virtual drive is made out of 2xSSDs in raid1 if I remember correctly from your earlier post ? What model are these SSD exactly ?