PowerEdge 2900 iSCSI Performance Problems w/ FreeBSD
Got a new storage server, it’s a PE2900 from Dell. Installed FreeBSD 7.2 on it, rebuilt the kernel with all the updates and included:
options iscsi_initiator
connected to the iSCSI target across the LAN, then I used:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/testiscsi/file.out bs=65536
to test the speeds after mounting it. I observed horrific speeds (in the range of 300-500KB/s).
To make a long story short, I discovered that using the extra Intel NIC I put in the system’s PCI slots fixed the problem. So I tried to upgrade firmware, but they all seem to be up to date. Looks like I’ll be disabling them in the BIOS and ordering some more Intel cards.
Damn Dell for putting those crappy Broadcoms in there.
Tags: 7.2, BIOS, Broadcom, dd, dell, firmware, FreeBSD, horrific, intel, iscsi, iscsi_initiator, kernel, LAN, PCI, poweredge, server, test, write speed
