[jwhat]

Hi Jan-Jaap and other Fuel/O350 Owners,

I have some good news 

I pulled the SAS3442X-R that was in my O350 and plugged it into Fuel, where it reported as having Firmware 1.26.

I then pulled it back out and did Firmware / BIOS flash to update it to IT (HBA) based versions from the Broadcom support site P21 package with: 1.33 FW / 6.36 BIOS.

Flashing from the RAID to IT (HBA) version, requires that you first erase the ROM which is only possible with MS-DOS version of sasflash utility.

NOTE: Erasing ROM also erases the SAS Address (so make sure you save this before flashing).
So once you update fw/bios you need to restore the SAS Address with: "sasflash -o -sasadd XXXXX" .

I got this version of SAS3442X (reports as "1068(B1)") as an "new old stock" retail package, so it came with all the required cabling (SAS/SATA & MOLEX) which means it was trivial to put into the Fuel.

The results are excellent. Here are at set of diskperf result, showing the SAS performance relative to an SSD based Octane and Spinning Disk Fuel

>> ---
>> --- 1. Here is diskperf of in built Ultra 160 SCSI boot disk
>> ---      with a Seagate Cheetah U160 spinning disk
>> ---
>> 
>> # diskperf -W -D -c4g -n "fuel/pink UW160 ST336706LW" testfile
>> #---------------------------------------------------------
>> # Disk Performance Test Results Generated By Diskperf V1.2
>> #
>> # Test name     : fuel/pink UW160 ST336706LW
>> # Test date     : Sat Oct  3 22:52:00 2020
>> # Test machine  : IRIX64 pink 6.5 07202013 IP35
>> # Test type     : XFS data subvolume
>> # Test path     : testfile
>> # Request sizes : min=16384 max=4194304
>> # Parameters    : direct=1 time=10 scale=1.000 delay=0.000
>> # XFS file size : 4294967296 bytes
>> #---------------------------------------------------------
>> # req_size  fwd_wt  fwd_rd  bwd_wt  bwd_rd  rnd_wt  rnd_rd
>> #  (bytes)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)
>> #---------------------------------------------------------
>>       16384    2.60   52.58    2.88    2.89    2.32    2.45
>>       32768    4.98   52.84    6.08    6.10    4.38    4.62
>>       65536    9.14   52.85   13.70   13.72    8.03    8.32
>>      131072   15.68   52.51   31.43   28.23   14.27   14.76
>>      262144   24.39   51.92   36.51   36.63   22.76   22.36
>>      524288   33.61   51.29   36.42   36.74   31.47   31.79
>>     1048576   41.44   51.62   46.25   41.76   39.28   37.59
>>     2097152   46.84   51.23   46.36   46.41   45.73   43.57
>>     4194304   50.30   50.96   49.32   49.69   49.13   47.92
>>     
>> ---
>> --- 2. And here is an Octane2 with an ACARD SAS/SATA adaptor
>> ---      with a Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD
>> ---
>> 
>> # diskperf -W -D -c4g -n "octane2/porcipine scsi/sata/acard 850 EVO" testfile
>> #---------------------------------------------------------
>> # Disk Performance Test Results Generated By Diskperf V1.2
>> #
>> # Test name     : octane2/porcipine scsi/sata/acard 850 EVO
>> # Test date     : Sat Oct  3 22:32:06 2020
>> # Test machine  : IRIX64 porcipine 6.5 07202013 IP30
>> # Test type     : XFS data subvolume
>> # Test path     : testfile
>> # Request sizes : min=16384 max=4194304
>> # Parameters    : direct=1 time=10 scale=1.000 delay=0.000
>> # XFS file size : 4294967296 bytes
>> #---------------------------------------------------------
>> # req_size  fwd_wt  fwd_rd  bwd_wt  bwd_rd  rnd_wt  rnd_rd
>> #  (bytes)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)
>> #---------------------------------------------------------
>>       16384   23.72   20.57   23.65   19.16   23.67   19.08
>>       32768   29.38   24.93   29.36   23.86   29.34   23.73
>>       65536   33.03   29.02   33.02   28.26   33.01   28.15
>>      131072   35.43   30.43   35.40   29.61   35.43   29.49
>>      262144   36.94   31.26   36.93   30.41   36.92   30.32
>>      524288   37.67   31.53   37.66   30.66   37.67   30.56
>>     1048576   37.99   31.43   37.98   30.81   37.98   30.79
>>     2097152   38.18   31.00   38.14   30.55   38.18   30.67
>>     4194304   38.27   30.04   38.28   29.83   38.28   29.89
>>     
>> ---
>> --- 3. Now here is the LSI Logic SAS3442X-R with
>> ---       Samsung 840 EVO SATA SSD
>> ---
>> 
>> # diskperf -W -D -c4g -n "fuel/pink sas3442X-I 840 EVO" test/testfile
>> #---------------------------------------------------------
>> # Disk Performance Test Results Generated By Diskperf V1.2
>> #
>> # Test name     : fuel/pink sas3442X-I 840 EVO
>> # Test date     : Sat Oct  3 22:23:11 2020
>> # Test machine  : IRIX64 pink 6.5 07202013 IP35
>> # Test type     : XFS data subvolume
>> # Test path     : test/testfile
>> # Request sizes : min=16384 max=4194304
>> # Parameters    : direct=1 time=10 scale=1.000 delay=0.000
>> # XFS file size : 4294967296 bytes
>> #---------------------------------------------------------
>> # req_size  fwd_wt  fwd_rd  bwd_wt  bwd_rd  rnd_wt  rnd_rd
>> #  (bytes)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)  (MB/s)
>> #---------------------------------------------------------
>>       16384   96.89  105.67   94.87   63.93   94.41   63.93
>>       32768  138.93  150.77  129.34  103.63  135.62  102.92
>>       65536  180.30  194.71  136.40  149.68   59.84  149.72
>>      131072  205.64  225.30  148.95  191.94   61.98  191.70
>>      262144  224.77  245.83  132.71  224.31   57.87  224.69
>>      524288  228.81  258.08  131.87  246.02   59.23  246.12
>>     1048576  224.70  264.18  111.43  257.66   59.37  257.81
>>     2097152  217.02  267.26  109.98  264.21   57.54  264.55
>>     4194304  179.81  268.91  135.53  267.42   57.62  267.30

So SAS3442X (-IT Flashed) works very well in Fuel and provides much better performance than the spinning U160 SCSI disk.
I have put more details on MS-DOS flashing steps on my blog.

This also confirms what Ian Mapleson advised me of a while ago, that using newer 1608 board with updated firmware allows you to get faster than 1.5 Gb/sec SATA throughput.
This makes for a very cheap disk performance boost (shame this is not a bootable disk through).

Cheers from Oz,


John.