Technical data
White Paper ⏐Performance Report PRIMERGY TX150 S6 Version: 5.1, November 2008
Benchmark results
The PRIMERGY TX150 S6 is equipped with controllers from the “Modular RAID” family. The variety of the RAID solu-
tions enables the user to choose the right controller for his application scenario.
The PRIMERGY TX150 S6 has the following RAID solutions to offer:
1. SATA RAID onboard controller
The controller is implemented directly on the motherboard of the server in the Intel ICH9R chipset and the RAID
stack is realized by the server CPU. This RAID solution is only foreseen for the connection of SATA hard disks.
Support is provided for RAID levels 0, 1 and 10 as well as for RAID 5 with an additional iButton. This controller
does not have a controller cache.
2. RAID Controller LSI MegaRAID SAS 1068
The controller is supplied as a PCI Express card. The maximum number of SATA and SAS hard disks that can
be connected to the controller is eight. Support is provided for RAID levels 0, 1 and 1E. The controller does not
have a cache.
3. RAID Controller LSI MegaRAID SAS 1078
The controller is supplied as a PCI Express card and offers the user a complete RAID solution. Both SATA and
SAS hard disks can be connected. Support is provided for RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60. Two different
versions of this controller are on offer with either a 256 MB or 512 MB cache. The controller cache can be pro-
tected against power failure by an optional battery backup unit (BBU). The controller supports up to 240 hard
disks.
Various SATA and SAS hard disks can be connected to these controllers. Depending on the performance required, it is
possible to select the appropriate disk subsystem. Depending on the model version the PRIMERGY TX150 S6 offers four
3½" SAS/SATA or eight 2½" SAS hot-plug bays for hard disks. Optionally, an extension box is available for the 3½"
variant with two additional 3½" hot-plug bays.
The following hard disks can be chosen for the PRIMERGY TX150 S6:
• 2½" SAS hard disks with a capacity of 36 GB, 73 GB and 146 GB (10 krpm)
• 2½" SAS hard disks with a capacity of 36 GB and 73 GB (15 krpm)
• 3½" SAS hard disks with a capacity of 73 GB, 146 GB and 300 GB (10 krpm)
• 3½" SAS hard disks with a capacity of 73 GB, 146 GB and 300 GB (15 krpm)
• 3½" SATA hard disks with a capacity of 160 GB, 250 GB, 500 GB and 750 GB (7.2 krpm)
The hard disk cache has influence on disk I/O performance. Unfortunately, this is frequently seen as a security problem
in the event of a power failure and is therefore disabled. On the other hand, it was for a good reason integrated by the
hard disk manufacturers to increase write performance. Features, such as Native Command Queuing (NCQ), only func-
tion at all when the disk cache is enabled. For performance reasons it is advisable to enable the disk cache for the SATA
hard disks in particular, which in comparison with the SAS hard disks rotate slowly. The by far larger cache for I/O ac-
cesses and thus a potential security risk for data loss in the event of a power failure is in any case in the main memory
and is administered by the operating system. To prevent data losses it is advisable to equip the system with an uninter-
ruptible power supply (UPS).
SATA RAID Onboard Controller ICH9R
The following illustrations use 3½" SATA hard disks to show how throughput depends on cache settings. The through-
puts of a single hard disk (Single Disk, SD) are compared with the throughputs of two hard disks in a RAID 0 and RAID 1
array.
Read throughput for sequential reading of 64 KB
blocks is not dependent on the cache settings. In
RAID 1 roughly the same throughput values are
achieved as in the single disk configuration,
although RAID 1 offers the benefit of data re-
dundancy. RAID 0 has a better utilization of
capacity and two hard disks RAID 0 almost dou-
ble the read throughput.
In contrast, write throughput with sequential
access with 64 KB blocks largely depends on the
cache settings. Enabling the disk cache im-
proves the write throughput by a factor of about
11 in a single disk configuration, by a factor of 13
in RAID 0 and by a factor of 7 in RAID 1. The
much higher write throughput is explained by the
optimized write accesses to the hard disk and
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