I have 2 identical Dell R420 servers with identical H710p (yes I am sure they are both 'p') mini RAID controllers. I ran ATTO disk test, then switched controllers and ran it again. Regardless of the server, and with identical settings I get very different performance with these 2 boards. I also pulled out a spare board and it tests the same as the slower one. So one board for some reason is much faster, especially on write (see screen shot of same server with two different controllers).
I am absolutely sure that all settings available to me from the Ctrl-R RAID bios and/or OMSA are the same. RAID10, Write back, disk cache mode on, adaptive read ahead - default stripe settings. Triple checked. It also looks like the basic controller settings are copied from the metadata on the array to each controller anyway. Firmware and driver versions match - both are running Server 2012 R2.
Regardless of what I tweak, the speed improvement *moves with the controller itself*.
Are there secret hidden settings on these boards? Or are there different versions of the H710p that are different speeds? I used MegaCLI to dump Cfg but I don't see anything telling there. What should I look for? I'm afraid to factory reset the fast one and risk losing the speed and I would love to get the other ones running as fast.
Note that in the attached screen shot the slower controller is showing writes at 3500 and the faster one shows writes at over 6000 - almost double.
