[Asterisk-Users] RAID affecting X100P performance...

[Seth Mattinen]

On Jul 21, 2004, at 12:36 PM, asterisk-users-request at lists.digium.com 
wrote:
>
> I have a P3-800 with two IDE drives in a software RAID1 configuration.
> Each drive is on a separate IDE channel. Now anytime there is HD
> activity, I hear "beeps" and "cutting out" on a call using the X100P
> card.
>
> I ran the zttest program, and discovered HD activity would drop the
> accuracy down to between 2% and 50%.
>
> However I noticed if I disabled one drive in the RAID1 array, zttest
> would always report 99.98% or higher. So one drive running works fine,
> but as soon as I enable the second drive, all hell breaks loose. DMA 
> and
> 32-bit mode are enabled on both drives as well.

Hey, I've heard that beeping too... but I never bothered to track it 
down until I read your message. No dropouts, however.


> I have a backup server with two Promise PCI IDE controllers in it, with
> 4 drives in a software RAID5 configuration, so just out of curiosity
> sake, I stuck a X100P card in it and tried running zttest while the 
> RAID
> was re-syncing. The results were pretty bad.
>
> --- Results after 384 passes ---
> Best: 36.779785 -- Worst: 1.562500
>
> Is this a poor mainboard issue, or is it actually not possible to do 
> IDE
> software RAID on a machine running Asterisk with X100P cards?
>
> Is anyone currently doing it?

I am. My system is a Duron 1200 with an Asus A7V266 board. I have an 
Athlon XP 2200 that I was planning on upgrading to. I am using the 
onboard IDE channels; the only cards in the server are video, ethernet, 
and two X100P's. No IRQ sharing. Three drives in RAID5; two of the 
drives are master/slave on one channel, the other shares a channel with 
a CD drive.

I'll run the same tests you did and report back with the results.

--
Seth "cave quid dicis, quando, et cui" Mattinen
sethm at rollernet.us