On Sat, 12 Jan 2008, Alan Romeril wrote: [ .... reformatted .... ] > Hello All,
> In a moment of insanity I've upgraded from a 5200+ to a Phenom > 9600 on my zfs server and I've had a lot of problems with hard hangs > when accessing the pool. The motherboard is an Asus M2N32-WS, which > has had the latest available BIOS upgrade installed to support the > Phenom. > > bash-3.2# psrinfo -pv > The physical processor has 4 virtual processors (0-3) > x86 (AuthenticAMD 100F22 family 16 model 2 step 2 clock 2310 MHz) > AMD Phenom(tm) 9600 Quad-Core Processor > > The pool is spread across 12 disks ( 3 x 4 disk raidz groups ) > attached to both the motherboard and a Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 in a > PCI-X slot (marvell88sx driver). The hangs occur during large > writes to the pool, i.e a 10G mkfile, usually just after the > physical disk access start, and the file is not created in the > directory on the pool at all. The system hard hangs at this point, > even with booting under kmdb there's no panic string and after > setting snooping=1 in /etc/system there's no crash dump created > after it reboots. Doing the same operation to a single UFS disk > attached to the motherboard's ATA133 interface doesn't cause a > problem, neither does writing to a raidz pool created from 4 files > on that ATA disk. If I use psradm and disable any 2 cores on the > Phenom there's no problem with the mkfile either, but turn a third > on and it'll hang. This is with the virtualization, and power now > extensions disabled in the BIOS. > > So, before I go and shout at the motherboard manufacturer are > there any components in b78 that might not be expecting a quad core > AMD cpu? Possibly in the marvell88sx driver? Or is there anything > more I can do to track this issue down. Please read the tomshardware.com article[1] where he found that Phenom upgrade compatibility is not what AMD would have expected/predicted/published. It's also possible that your CPU VRM (voltage regulators) can't supply the necessary current when the Phenom gets really busy. The only way to diagnose this issue is to apply "swap-tronics" to the motherboard and power supply. Welcome to the bleeding edge! :( IMHO Phenom is far from ready for prime time. And this is coming from an AMD fanboy who has built, bought and recommended AMD based systems exclusively for the last 2 1/2 years+. Squawking at the motherboard maker is unlikely to get you any satisfaction IMHO. Cut your losses and go back to the 5200+ or build a system based on a Penyrn chip when the less expensive Penyrn family members become available - proba-bobly[2] within 60 days. As an aside, with ZFS, you gain more by maxing out your memory than by spending the equivalent dollars on a CPU upgrade. And memory has *never* been this inexpensive. Recommendation: max out your memory and tune your 5200+ based system for max memory throughput[3]. PS: IMHO Phenom won't be a real contender until they triple the L3 memory. The architecture is sound, but currently cache-starved IMHO. PPS: On an Sun x2200 system (bottom-of-the-line config [2*2.2GHz dual core CPUs] purchased during Suns anniverserary sale) we "pushed in" a SAS controller, two 140Gb SAS disks and 24Gb of 3rd party RAM[4]. Yes - configured for ZFS boot and ZFS based filesystems exclusively and currently running snv_68 (due to be upgraded when build 80 ships). You cannot believe how responsive this system is - mainly due to the RAM. For a highly performant ZFS system, there are 3 things that you should maximize/optimize: 1) RAM capacity 2) RAM capacity 3) RAM capacity PPPS: Sorry to beat this horse into submission - but! If you have a choice (at a given budget) of 800MHz memory parts at N gigabytes (capacity), or, 667MHz (or 553MHz) memory parts at N * 2 gigabytes - *always*[5] go with the config that gives you the maximum memory capacity. You really won't notice the difference between 800MHz memory parts and 667MHz memory parts, but you *will* notice the difference between the system with 8Gb of RAM and (the same system with) 16Gbs of RAM when it comes to ZFS (and overall) performance. [1] http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/26/phenom_motherboards/ [2] deliberate new word - represents techno uncertainty [3] memtestx86 v3 is your friend. Available on the UBCD (Ultimage Bood CD ROM) [4] odd mixture of 1Gb and 2Gb parts [5] there are some very rare exceptions to this rule - for really unusual workload scenarios (like scientific computing). HTH. Regards, Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice: 972.379.2133 Fax: 972.379.2134 Timezone: US CDT OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Member - Apr 2005 to Mar 2007 http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/ogb_2005-2007/ Graduate from "sugar-coating school"? Sorry - I never attended! :) _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
