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Server 2012 Essentials Storage Spaces, Extremely Slow Read Speeds (Write Speeds as expected)

Respondido Server 2012 Essentials Storage Spaces, Extremely Slow Read Speeds (Write Speeds as expected)

  • Tuesday, January 15, 2013 2:04 AM
     
     
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    I have a storage pool setup with to spaces configured.  One with is setup with Parity and one is a Simple space.  Everything was running fine for a couple weeks, but then suddenly the performance dropped to an unusable speed.  Oddly enough the performance drop impacts reads on the Simple Space, not writes.  The read speed on the Parity Space is OK, but the write speed is a little slow, but not unbearable.  I had not officially tested the speed before, so I don't have the exact measure of performance degradation, but it is clear from the test that it is sub-par.  Streaming movies from the server (they are in my simple space) is not even possible as a movie will buffer many times throughout.  Below are performance tests on both the Simple and Parity spaces.  The only change in config is one of my drives failed, which was primarily serving a third Simple Space, which is now offline.  Should I look to move my data to another drive, and start the storage pool over from scratch?  This is not ideal, but now that I have all of my drives with bigger sizes I don't see me expanding much more beyond that.

    Simple Space :

    Simple Space

    Parity Space : 

    

     

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  • Thursday, January 17, 2013 12:56 AM
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    Hello,
     
    Thank you for your question.

    I am trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue. There might be some time delay. Appreciate your patience.
     
    Thank you for your understanding and support.

    TechNet Subscriber Support in forum |If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

     
  • Thursday, January 17, 2013 9:44 AM
     
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    Hi,

    I would like you to perform the following actions:

    a. Update the latest update in Server 2012

    b. Open a command line with administrator privilege and type: chkdsk <volume> /f /r. Type Y to confirm. ( Replace <volume> as the problematic volume like G:)

    Note:
    Depending on the data and volume size, chkdsk process may take minutes to hours or days. With the /R switch, the volume must be unlocked from other applications or processes. That means the sql server service should be first stopped. You may first dismount the volume or schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts. If the volume is dismounted, all opened handles to this volume would then be invalid.

    I would like to suggest that you schedule a proper downtime to do this if this is in production environment.

    Please see more information in:

    An explanation of the new /C and /I Switches that are available to use with Chkdsk.exe
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314835/

    Chkdsk
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc730714(WS.10).aspx

    c. If the issue still persists after run chkdsk with /r switch, we may consider perform the disk health checking and replace the disk if necessary. Involve the storage vendor to upgrade the driver/firmware of the disk controller to the latest version.

    Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

     
  • Thursday, January 17, 2013 7:55 PM
     
     
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    Thanks for the reply I will try this out this evening and let you know the outcome.

    One point I realized I maybe should bring up after further research, is one of the drives is attached via a SATA controller card.  The other drives are attached to the mother board SATA ports.  I read that storage spaces may have issue's is there is a specific volume created over two controller cards.  Is this true?

     
  • Friday, January 18, 2013 8:04 AM
     
     
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    Hi,

    We didn't notice any issues like that are reported. There should be no problem as long as the storage space supports the controllers.

    Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

     
  • Tuesday, January 22, 2013 6:50 PM
     
     
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    I tried the above steps and the issue still persists.  As I have a spare server I am going to move my data and performing some tests.  I am going to create three storage pools:

    1) Storage Pool A will contain only drives attached via the motherboard
    2) Storage Pool B will contain only the drive(s) (maybe I will add two drives to the controller) attached to the PCI controller card.
    3) Storage Pool C will contain all attached drives

    For each storage pool I will perform the a speed test on all three configurations (simple, mirror, and parity).

    To clarify the controller card (SYBA SY-VIA6421-3S1P) I am using doesn't say it supports Server Essentials 2012, but the server detected the card and installed the appropriate driver.  I also got their software to install and verified that the default option of no "RAID" arrays.  Again, I ensured that there are no RAID arrays created for the attached drives.  

    The tests outlined above will determine my next steps.  In the mean time are there any controller cards someone can recommend that are confirmed to work with Server 2012 Essentials?


    • Edited by pofo14 Tuesday, January 22, 2013 6:57 PM
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  • Thursday, March 14, 2013 1:46 AM
     
     
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    I ended up moving my data and recreating my spaces without the controller card.  Performance was fine....for a while.

    It is not about 6 weeks later and the  performance of my storage spaces is absolutely unusable.  It and read / copy will get 20MB/s for less than a minute and then go to literally 0, it will spike to 500kbs/s and then back to zero.  The calculated time to copy 40GB to a new external HD was 22 days.

    I just want to stop using storage spaces but I first need to copy my data to an alternate location (ext. HDD I purchased), but with those speeds it is not possible.  Any ideas?

     
  • Thursday, March 14, 2013 5:30 PM
     
     
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    I ended up moving my data and recreating my spaces without the controller card.  Performance was fine....for a while.

    It is not about 6 weeks later and the  performance of my storage spaces is absolutely unusable.  It and read / copy will get 20MB/s for less than a minute and then go to literally 0, it will spike to 500kbs/s and then back to zero.  The calculated time to copy 40GB to a new external HD was 22 days.

    I just want to stop using storage spaces but I first need to copy my data to an alternate location (ext. HDD I purchased), but with those speeds it is not possible.  Any ideas?

    Check are your drives actually healthy. Break the space, map the drives one-by-one and run surface scan utility for them. If you'd see a huge gaps in performance charts - these are remaps and it's physical issues preventing ANY logical volume manager from working properly. If drives individiual performance is fine - "we do blame Microsoft" (c) one of the HDD vendors.

    StarWind iSCSI SAN & NAS

     
  • Friday, March 15, 2013 4:14 PM
     
     
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    There are 5 drives, all new within the past 6 months.  I will perform a surface scan, but unless Storage Spaces themselves cause issue's with drives I find it hard to believe they all are bad.

    If one drive is bad and one "bad apple can spoil the bunch" then Storage Spaces is clearly not a viable solution.

     
  • Saturday, March 16, 2013 12:28 AM
     
     
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    There are 5 drives, all new within the past 6 months.  I will perform a surface scan, but unless Storage Spaces themselves cause issue's with drives I find it hard to believe they all are bad.

    If one drive is bad and one "bad apple can spoil the bunch" then Storage Spaces is clearly not a viable solution.

    You don't need ALL of them being bad - just one put into space can cause everything being flaky. Happens to all RAID0/10 configs (everything scattering one stripe among different physical spindles / cells).

    StarWind iSCSI SAN & NAS

     
  • Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:37 PM
     
     
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    Its an older thread, but what I noticed is: 

    Without Storage Spaces: about 1100 read. 500 write. 

    With Storage Spaces (Raid 0): about 700 read, but 630 write. 

    So it seems Storage Spaces is doing good when it's about writing, but very bad when it comes to read, as having a loss of about 40 % read speed is a lot, on the other hand a gain in write. 

    With smaller blocks, Write is about the same, read about 25 % less. 

    Tried with ATTO Benchmark. 

    Did the similar test with HD Tune pro and writing 10 GB, I don't see the same, so it must be under some circumstances. 

    As mentioned, I did a Raid 0 at Storage Spaces. Doing a Parity, it's way worse than using the controller. (both benchmark tools). 
    Doing Mirror with 2 mirrors on Storage Spaces (what should be like Raid 10), it's even worse, which is uncommon. Raid 1 should be faster in my eyes.. but wasn't. 

    So for me is the question more - using storage spaces with Raid0 to have the benefits it gives, as I like those, with Thin Provision and stuff, 
    or forget about it. 

    For sure I can't go ahead and use Parity or Mirror, as performance is too bad using it (or at least yet). 

    Of course I can't tell if the controller itself has troubles with storage spaces, but at a teched video they kinda said, you can take anything that is presented to the disk
    SSD, SAS, SATA, Fibre, it would take it all (despite if it makes sence to do it or not this way). 

    Anyway, anyone having similar issues, or the other way around, that storage spaces gains speed?

    Thanks
    Patrick