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Hi Paul

I hear you, and I am not wanting to say you are wrong - just noting that
concentrating on one factor when everything around it is changing (I/O,
SQL, Option 42 etc) can be a worry.

As I said, I clearly don't have the full story and you do, so I am sure you
have it under control, it was just a comment.

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 7:53 AM, Steinmetz, Paul <PSteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Evan,

This has been a decade of planning and changes.
Years ago, we found that almost 40% of our IO was due to paging and page
faults.
We added memory, solved that issue.
Also added additional CPU.

It's actually a combination of everything, but IO is the biggest culprit.

From one of previous threads, if we could afford enough memory, and if IBM
had a tool to keep all files in memory, that would be the cat's meow.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Evan Harris
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2017 1:04 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Power7 / Power8 internal disk differences - future disk
planning

Hi Paul

Clearly I don't know all the details but on the surface of it, the focus
on internal disk performance and nothing else looks a bit like putting all
your eggs in one basket. I can't help thinking you are painting yourself
into a corner particularly on the hardware front.

On 8/12/2017 2:22 AM, "Steinmetz, Paul" <PSteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I've already researched this, also confirmed by MPG, internal will
always outperform a SAN.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Roberto José Etcheverry Romero
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2017 7:20 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Power7 / Power8 internal disk differences - future disk
planning

Paul,

Is there a reason not to consider direct attached external storage?
I'm installing a v9000 right now and the performance when we did a PoC
was amazing... You may not need a fullblown v9k but maybe the newly
announced "cheaper" FS900?
I admit I haven't done the comparison on dual internal IOA + ssd vs
2FC cards and external storage...


On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 2:15 AM, Steinmetz, Paul
<PSteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Larry,

I totally understand with high IOPS with SSD.
Any config with SSD will see a vast improvement.
We have large batch processes, hundreds of open files, billions,
maybe trillions of IOs.
3 to 4 hour run times.
I'm constantly trying reduce the run time of these lengthy batch
processes.
I spend lot of time researching all the disk IO options, for
optimal performance, to reduce run times.

Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: DrFranken [mailto:midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2017 11:45 PM
To: Steinmetz, Paul; 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: Re: Power7 / Power8 internal disk differences - future disk
planning

Yes true and with large numbers of disks we do this especially with
spinny disks. Remember that the large cache controllers today will
support as many as 96 drives (four 24 drive drawers) and in such as
case I would certainly want each RAID card driving half the drives.
If that was 4 or 6 or 8 RAID sets yes true.

With the SSDs though the IOPs are silly high, like over 6,000 for
one SSD vs 150 for a 15K Spinny (400 to 1!) . So the rules change
for SSDs not so much due to getting absolute maximum IOPS but
because the numbers are so high they almost don't matter. Since SSDs
are more expensive as well saving a drive here or there is easily
justified compared to the loss of that one drive's IOPS.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 12/6/2017 11:02 PM, Steinmetz, Paul wrote:
Larry,

Referencing V7R3 Disk Management manual.

Performance
Parity sets optimized for performance provide the fastest data
access.
The IOA may generate more parity sets with fewer numbers of disk
units. For example, if an IOA had 15 disk units and is optimized
for
performance, the result might be three parity sets with five disk
units each.

When in a dual storage IOA configuration, the system attempts to
create
an even number of parity sets.
An even number of parity sets distributes the workload evenly
between a pair of adapters which are in a dual storage IOA
configuration. This provides the fastest data access since each
adapter has a piece of the
workload.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Steinmetz, Paul
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2017 10:14 PM
To: 'DrFranken'; 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: Power7 / Power8 internal disk differences - future
disk planning

Larry,

Interesting.
Don't remember from where, but ages ago, I always try for an even
number
of raid sets.
I think it was for performance reasons, more sets, better
performance.
Maybe that rule isn't true any longer.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: DrFranken [mailto:midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2017 10:05 PM
To: Steinmetz, Paul; 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: Re: Power7 / Power8 internal disk differences - future
disk planning

First I would do one RAID set. Definitely would do the hot spare.

Two raid sets lose two drives for no gain that I can see.

In a Power8 system that will have IBM i accessing the drives
likely prefer the 12 drives over the 8. Remember you'll have one
less due to the hot spare so 8 leaves you with only 7 arms which
is just over the minimum of 6 for IBM i performance. With one RAID
set you could drop to
11 drives and match capacity of 12 with two.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 12/6/2017 9:47 PM, Steinmetz, Paul wrote:
Larry,

If you needed about 7tb, would you use
12 #ES8R - 775GB SFF-3 SSD 4k eMLC4 for IBM i or
8 #ES8W - 1.55TB SFF-3 SSD 4k eMLC4 for IBM i

Raid 5 - 2 parity sets, 1 hot spare.

In each case, you lose 3 units, two to raid, 1 for hot spare..

Pros/cons if any.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: DrFranken [mailto:midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2017 5:11 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion; Steinmetz, Paul
Subject: Re: Power7 / Power8 internal disk differences - future
disk planning

See in line comments.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 12/6/2017 4:38 PM, Steinmetz, Paul wrote:
Larry,

1) My current SSD are ES0H, announced November 2013 - IBM i 7.1
Technology Refresh 7 and IBM i 6.1 Additional Enhancements.

775 GB SFF SSD with eMLC (#ES0E, #ES0F, #ES0G, #ES0H) The new
775 GB
SFF SSD, using the same technology as the new higher performance 387
GB disk drive, doubles the capacity that can fit in a single slot.
IBM i support is provided for both POWER7 and POWER7+ servers, and
for both IBM i
7.1 and IBM i 6.1 with 6.1.1 machine code.

The documentation doesn't always include if they are 5XX or 4K.
How does one determine this?
I'm using FC #5913, so from your previous post below, I'm
concluding
they are 5XX.

Yes that is correct those are 5xx. Normally if they do not
specify they
are 5XX if they specify they will say 4K.



2) Will these ES0H disks work on Power8 in an EXP24S, or
possibly
Power9 with an EXP24S or EXP24SX.

Yes to Power8 in an EXP24S but if they are in the system unit
today
they will need new sleds to fit in there. Since you are using 5913 I
expect they are in SFF-2 sleds today so that will work.

'Likely' to Power9 BUT because that stuff isn't announced yet we
cannot
be certain.


3) Based on your previous post, (4K Disks they are better
because they cut the number of I/Os by 8) For future planning,
we should get
rid of the 5XX and plan on using 4K, correct?

Indeed. And you also get a refreshed warranty on the new drives
as well
so that's a big money saver with SSDs. Despite the lower number of
raw I/Os the amount of data moved isn't significantly lower so
actual performance gains are minimal. However all disks are moving
to 4K Block going forward and I would guess at some point IBM i will
drop
support for 5XX block disks.


4) With that said, future planning for disks.

Production - for top performance
#ES8D - 775GB SFF-2 SSD 4k eMLC4 for IBM i
#ES8G - 1.55TB SFF-2 SSD 4k eMLC4 for IBM i
#ES8R - 775GB SFF-3 SSD 4k eMLC4 for IBM i
#ES8W - 1.55TB SFF-3 SSD 4k eMLC4 for IBM i

R&D - improvement over current 10K spinny, but using the cheaper
SSD.
#ES84 - 931 GB Mainstream SAS 4k SFF-3 SSD for IBM i
#ES8Z - 931 GB Mainstream SAS 4k SFF-2 SSD for IBM i
#ES93 - 1.86 TB Mainstream SAS 4k SFF-3 SSD for IBM i
#ES97 - 1.86 TB Mainstream SAS 4k SFF-2 SSD for IBM i
#ESE2 - 3.72 TB Mainstream SAS 4k SFF-3 SSD for IBM i
#ESE8 - 3.72 TB Mainstream SAS 4k SFF-2 SSD for IBM i

"Improvement over 10K spinny." Yes it will!! There's your
candidate for 'understatement of the year'. :-)


5) However - I did read this link that scares me a bit with the
performance of large SSD drives, especially if they are Mainstream.

An interesting question about SSD performance scaling with size


https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/svcstorwize/e
nt
ry
/
A
n_interesting_question_about_SSD_performance_scaling_with_size?l
an
g=
e
n

An interesting read! The biggest issue I think for IBM i is doing
something silly like getting two massive SSDs and mirroring them.
Problem is that IBM i wants arms and even these incredibly fast
arms
are held back by IBM i and shallow I/O queues. Plus the big drives
are more bucks per TB at this point and you will have slots anyway
sooooo get a half dozen at least, perhaps 8 and now everyone is happy!





Any thoughts from the group?

Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: DrFranken [mailto:midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2017 5:42 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion; Steinmetz, Paul
Subject: Re: Power7 / Power8 internal disk differences

Yes and no.

Physically the disks in the Power7 CEC are in slightly deeper
and
slightly taller sleds than those in Power8 CEC disks. However the
disks could be resleded and used in the new system as the actual
disks themselves are compatible.

As for the 4K Disks they are better because they cut the number
of I/Os by 8. Now IBM i has used 4K has a block size since the
CISCO to RISC migration years ago but has always had to write 8
520Byte sectors to handle that. (Whether they only update 1 of
the 8 if a very small update is performed within the block I do
not know.)

Tracking what needs to be updated should be simpler with 4K
Block
disks and they are pretty much the standard in the industry now.
With them you can address 8 times the storage that you could with
520 byte sectors using the same number of addresses.

To use 4K Block disks you need PCIe Gen3 RAID cards or newer on
Power Systems. So for example FC #5913 or FC #ESA3 controllers
will NOT recognize 4K Disks. FC #5887 disk drawers work fine
with either 4K or
520 byte disks.

Power8 CECs can have 520 or 4K Block disks in them.


- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com<http://www.Frankeni.com>
www.iDevCloud.com<http://www.iDevCloud.com> - Personal
Development
IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com<http://www.iInTheCloud.com> - Commercial IBM
i
Cloud Hosting.

On 12/4/2017 4:47 PM, Steinmetz, Paul wrote:
1) Are Power7 and Power8 internal disks different?

2) What is difference between the 5XX and 4k disks, which is
better,
and where are they used?

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!
/w
i
k
i
/IBM%20i%20Technology%20Updates/page/IBM%20i%20IO%20Support%20D
et
ai
l
s



Thank You
_____
Paul Steinmetz
IBM i Systems Administrator

Pencor Services, Inc.
462 Delaware Ave
Palmerton Pa 18071

610-826-9117 work
610-826-9188 fax
610-349-0913 cell
610-377-6012 home

psteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx<mailto:psteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx>
http://www.pencor.com/


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