Supermicro X9SCM-F Slow and erratic Disk Performance on 6.7

[joedr]

Hi All!

Just installed 6.7 on Supermicro X9SCM-F board and so far everything is working fine except disk speed/performance.  I have one SSD and one regular 3.5" HDD on this homelab.

If I try to copy something to/from any of the disk, a 8-9 GB file takes between 5-20 mins and sometimes even fail to copy.  During this slow copies I noticed that the server page even slows down and become unresponsive at times.

I have tried disabling vmk_ahci module using this (esxcli system module set --enabled=false --module=vmw_ahci) and it seems to take away the fail to copy but still very slow performance.

This is what I am getting when looking for the available modules:

[root@VMware:~] esxcli software vib list | grep ahci

sata-ahci                      3.0-26vmw.670.0.0.8169922             VMW     VMwareCertified   2018-09-01

vmw-ahci                       1.2.0-6vmw.670.0.0.8169922            VMW     VMwareCertified   2018-09-01

One thing I noticed is that when vmk-ahci is disabled, the new driver is "ahci" instead of "sata_ahci" I saw some other posts related to 6.5 when dealing with slow disk performance.

Can someone be kind to point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance!

joedr

[iopsGent]

What storage controller are you using? Does it have a cache?

[joedr]

Thanks for the prompt response! 

It is the controller that came with the board.  Intel C204 PCH Chipset.

Here is the link for the board:  Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X9SCM-F

I loaded the drivers listed on the VMware Compatibility List and the six sata ports are listed.

[iopsGent]

Cool ok, did you reboot after disabl9nig the device drive?r

[joedr]

Yes.  I did reboot after the change.

[iopsGent]

ah ok, is the a new install or an upgrade? Were you running 6.5?

[joedr]

Clean install on 6.7 iso.

[joedr]

I loaded Windows 10 just to test the performance on an OS that I am familiar and the controller was working correctly on my SSD.  Got me to suspect the other HDD and it seems that something is wrong with it.

I removed the HDD and loaded ESXI again and it seems to be working as it should.  I will leave it running for the rest of the day and reply back with an update.

Thanks VitualizedRob for your suggestions!

[iopsGent]

Good news! np.