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HP Procurve 1800-24G + nvidia teaming + TS509

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Dennis Wood

Senior Member
One of our test workstations here uses an P32N-SLI board from Asus. This board has dual NIC ports which can be configured using Nvdia's control panel in a team. With the other 802.3ad (supposedly) compliant switches we tested, this teaming would never work correctly if the switch was set up with a trunk corresponding to the teamed workstation. In fact the teaming seemed to work better with dumb switches...but regardless, it was buggy and we kept this workstation in single port mode.

With the HP Procurve 1800-24G switch, we've observed that it is the only switch that seems to handle 802.3ad LACP properly. Toggling LACP on the ports you want to trunk results in automatic and dynamic configuring as it should, and you don't configure a trunk otherwise.

So on a whim, I decided to test the Nvidia NIC teaming with the HP switch (LACP toggled on the two Nvidia NIC ports) and for the first time, it works properly, with no bugs. It's definitly faster so our standard 5 GB mixed file test suite just recorded the highest ever write rates to the TS509 in RAID 5 with 4GB of cache..78 MB/s write with a read rate of 96 MB/s. Yes I know there's 4GB of cache there but before teaming, the fastest we saw from the Nvidia box was 70MB/s write.

A Vista SP1 18GB file drag and drop to the NAS reported a write rate that peaked at 105MB/s and ended at 78MB/s during the write. The 18GB read from the NAS to workstation was stable at 93MB/s.

So if you're using Nvidia chipset mobo's with dual NIC setups, then you'll want to check out the HP Procurve 1800-24G, or 8G. Observing switch stats, it's obvious that both NAS load balancing ports are being used dynamically, even with just one workstation "hitting" the NAS.
 
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I'm pretty sure you're bounded by the max local RAID throughput bandwidth at this point. You can verify this by using SSH and running some dd test on the RAID volume. Typically I use the following to time a 3 GB file write and then read.

# time dd if=/dev/zero of=foo bs=1024k count=3072
# time dd if=foo of=/dev/null bs=1024k count=3072
 
Yoh-dah, I've tested the Adaptec 3405 local RAID controller (we use it in RAID 0 mode with 4 drives) and posted results here: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=667&highlight=adaptec+3405

I use this workstation often for tests because reads are in the 200MB/s area, and writes in the 140MB/s range.

Mf, it's funny that Asus omits the fact that boards like the P5W-DH have dual NIC ports and are completely fine with teaming. You just need to go to Marvel and get the drivers yourself. Down the line if you get a fully LACP capable switch, you can switch modes to "dynamic" and that's where the cool stuff happens. Which mobo are you using?
 
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Sorry Dennis -- I meant local performance on the QNAP (through ssh). I'm pretty sure your 4-disk RAID 0 shouldn't be the bottleneck.
 
Mf, it's funny that Asus omits the fact that boards like the P5W-DH have dual NIC ports and are completely fine with teaming. You just need to go to Marvel and get the drivers yourself. Down the line if you get a fully LACP capable switch, you can switch modes to "dynamic" and that's where the cool stuff happens. Which mobo are you using?

Dennis,

It's a P5B Deluxe Wifi. I will be trying the "Dynamic" setting when my HP switch arrives.

The only odd thing is that from My Network Places I cannot see any other machines on the network, but I can access their shares OK (I am on a Workgroup and not an AD Domain).

I also had an issue with locking down my router to allow access to specific MAC addresses only. I found that I needed to put in both MAC addresses even though I only get 1 IP address. I guess it makes sense, but I currently have the TS-509 in NIC failover mode and that works fine with only the "active" MAC address specified at the router. Perhaps I should also add the other MAC address otherwise if/when it failsover the TS-509 may get locked out?

EDIT

Sorted the Workgoup issue - the network had defaulted to WORKGROUP. Setting it back to my real workgroup fixed the problem.
 
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Dennis,
Can you please help newbie with network configuration ?
I just purchased 1800-8G switch and i guess I'm doing something wrong ...
When I enable LACP I get slower data transfer than without it.
My 2 workstations have only one single gigabit Ethernet connections.
and they are connected to port 7 and 8 on the HP. TS509 is connected to port 1 and 2
and set to balancing load. Can you give me hint what i have to enable on the switch to get best performance ?

Thanks
 
Sorry I've been a bit busy over the last few weeks. Lif, I don't see an issue there, but which ports did you enable LACP on? I've only enabled LACP on ports that are actually teamed. Also, is your TS509 running the latest firmware?
 
Thanks for reply !
I have to say I'm not expert :)
2 LAN ports from the 509 connected to port 1 and 2 on the 1800
PC1 port 8
PC2 port 7
Can you give me idea how to set it up properly ?
If I enable LACP on port 1 and 2 I get warning that they are on the same trunk and that this is not recommended
Latest FW 2.1.0 installed
 
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Restore the switch to defaults. Then enable LACP on ports 1 and 2 via "Trunks -> LACP Setup" Don't configure a manual trunk! The TS509 requires ports with automatic LACP configured which on the HP Procurve switch means you don't set up a trunk. You only enable LACP on the two ports connected to the TS509. Just reboot everything after you make that change. If you've got it right, the "TRUNKS -> Trunk Membership" screen will not actually show any trunks, but the ports you enabled LACP on will be greyed out. If you then look at "TRUNKS -> LACP Status" , you'll see the switch has set up partner port numbers and operational port keys.

The great thing about this setup is that even if you unplug one of the NAS cables, and plug in something else, the switch will figure it out and dynamically reconfigure.
 
That's what I did (no trunks listed ) and I still get the warning when enabling LACP for both 509 ports.
I ignored that warning and with this set up I get transfer rates about 15% faster then before. ( 30-45Mb/s)

Thanks
 
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