Techware Labs - Reviews - Fujitsu SAS Drives and Highpoint RocketRAID 2640X4 Testing in Linux

Drivers

HighPoint offers an open source driver for the RocketRAID 2640X4 the Linux kernel versions 2.4 and 2.6, for both 32bit and 64bit Intel platforms. This is a nice feature for the purist that wants to keep their systems free from proprietary drivers and modules. Major distributions like Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, OpenSuSE, SuSE, SuSE Enterprise, FreeBSD and Macintosh have binary packages provided for their respective package managers. Notably, HighPoint doesn't offer a pre-compiled version of their driver for Debian based distros. The lack of a binary driver package for Debian implies that Ubuntu Server is not directly supported, however the open source driver is easily compiled on any Linux platform with a modern version of the GCC compiler suite and the kernel headers installed. I did a test compile of the open source driver on Ubuntu server, and successfully got the driver compiled and loaded with no issues. The readme provided in the driver download is quite good and steps you through the way. While to the experienced Linux user, the compilation of a driver from source should not be a major issue, the newbie is warned in this case to RTFM. The open source driver also has the ability to be applied as a patch to the Linux kernel source, this means that if you are running a custom kernel that for some reason is binary incompatible with the provided driver, you can apply the patch and rebuild to obtain hardware support.

Here are the driver links as presented on the manufacturer website:

Fedora - Download
RHEL - Download
CentOS - Download
SuSE - Download
SuSE Enterprise - Download
FreeBSD - Download
Macintosh - External Site
Source - Download

Configurations

The test system that I used during my performance testing consisted of the following parts:

Motherboard Tyan Tomcat n3400B

Processor AMD Opteron 1218 HE

Memory Corsair ValueSelect (2 x 1GB) DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)

Chipset nVIDIA nForce Pro 3400

Hard Disk Drive Fujitsu SAS Drives 15k.5 (4x RAID 5)

The Operating system that I chose to use was the Community Enterprise Operating System or CentOS. While CentOS does not ship with a driver for the RocketRAID 2640X4, I found it quite easy to download the tgz file and install the driver module from the manufacturer website. Once I finished the driver installation process, which was taken directly from the readme file included in the driver tarball, I created an ext2 filesystem with no additional options over the defaults. I performed a variety of tests, and tabulated the results. I then created an ext3 filesystem with the default journal options and performed tests. The results are listed and explained in detail below.

We would like to thank Fujitsu for donating the hard drives used in this testing. The MAX3147 SAS are perfect for use in critical role servers and workstations where performance and reliability are key. For gaming these drives are relatively inexpensive and when combined in a raid configuration such as we have here the performance is blazing fast.

Fujitsu Specifications:

Model		MAX3036RC	MAX3073RC	MAX3147RC
Functional Specifications
Storage Capacity (formatted)(1)		36.7GB	73.5GB	147.0GB
Disks		1	2	4
Heads (read/write)		2	4	8
Bytes/Sector		512
Seek Time	Track to track	Read: 0.2 ms (typ) / Write: 0.4 ms (typ)
	Average	Read: 3.3 ms (typ) / Write: 3.8 ms (typ)
	Full track	Read: 8.0 ms (typ) / Write: 9.0 ms (typ)
Average Latency		2.0 ms
Rotational Speed		15,000 RPM
Areal Density		59 Gbits/sq. in.
Data Transfer Rate	To/from media	147 MB/s
Data Transfer Rate	To/from host	SAS: 3Gbps
Recording Code		32/34 MEEPRML
Interface		Dual Port SAS
Head Positioning Method		Rotary VCM
Start Time		30 s (typ)
Stop Time		30 s (typ)
Buffer Size(2)		16 MB
Physical Specifications
Power Requirements	Voltage	5 V ± 5%, 12 V ± 5%
	Spin-up	12V ± 5%, 2.5 A (peak) 5V ± 5%, 0.7 A (peak)
	Idle (typ.)	11.5W
Dimensions (HxWxD)		25.4mm x 101.6mm x 146.0mm
Weight		750g
Ambient Temperature	Operating	5°C to 55°C (DE base 60°C max)
	Non-operating	-40°C to 70°C
	Gradient	15°C/H max
Relative Humidity	Operating	5% to 95% (non-condensing)
	Non-operating	5% to 95% (non-condensing)
	Max. wet bulb	29°C (operating)
Vibration	Operating	0.6 mm (5 to 20 Hz) / 1.0 G (20 to 300 Hz)
Vibration	Non-operating	3.1 mm (5 to 20 Hz) / 5.0 G (20 to 300 Hz)
Shock	Operating	65 G max. (2 ms)
Shock	Non-operating	250 G max. (2 ms)
Altitude (operation)	Operating	3,048 m (max.)
Altitude (operation)	Non-operating	12,192 m (max.)
Acoustics Noise (idle sound power) (typ.)		</= 3.6bels (ready)
Reliability Specifications
MTBF		1,200,000 hours
Component Life		5 years
Error Rates	Seek error	10 per 108 seeks
Error Rates	Unrecoverable errors	1 per 1015 bits read
Limited Warranty		5 years (from date of purchase). Visit online or call toll free at (800) 626-4686 for full Limited Warranty details and restrictions.

Features:

State-of-the-art hard disk drives for your most demanding enterprise applications

3.5-inch RoHS compliant enterprise hard disk drives offer 15K RPM spindle speed and feature storage capacities up to 147GB
Ideal for applications requiring high performance and high bandwidth
Native Command Queuing (NCQ), providing faster execution of operation commands
Uses smaller connectors and cables than U320, a benefit acknowledged by the SCSI Trade Association (STA)
Point-to-point connections allows for improved input-output per second (IOPS) in proportion to the number of drives connected.

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