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Online.net Dedibox XC 2016 BIOS Bug?
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Online.net Dedibox XC 2016 BIOS Bug?

exception0x876exception0x876 Member, Host Rep, LIR

I've ordered the Dedibox XC 2016 HDD version to use for my personal needs, but I noticed some serious slow down during filesystem creation via mkfs.ext4. So I rebooted under Rescue system just to find out the hilarious write speed of their hard drive

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/sda1/test bs=1M count=100 conv=fdatasync
100+0 records in
100+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 8.3943 s, 12.5 MB/s

I should mention that the read speed was ok and always stayed at 100MB/s+. I created a support ticket and their rep said:

Online - Julien
Hello,

thanks for your patience.
After further check, it seems like we have a BIOS bug affecting our XC.

The port is not running properly (SATA II instead of SATA III) and offer lower performance that it should.
Our engineering team is already working on it, and we'll deliver a patch in the coming weeks for that kind of issue.

Regards, Julien V.
L2 Technician @ Online.net.

I don't think that is the case though, since if that was true all other customers would experience the same issue. Is it?

«13

Comments

  • I have the same "issue" on 1 of my 2 XCs. Makes it even more weird.

  • WinneWinne Member
    edited April 2016

    My XC 2016 is fine, but yeah their BIOS is buggy.

    100+0 records in
    100+0 records out
    104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 1.08107 s, 97.0 MB/s
  • emilvemilv Member
    edited April 2016

    100+0 records in
    100+0 records out
    104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 1.61639 s, 64.9 MB/s

  • xyzxyz Member
    edited April 2016
  • Mine SSD version works well about 260 MB/s, would be more on SATA3.

  • Mine is about 80MB/s, but the XC Iam cancelling can do 100MB/s

  • @Spacedust said:
    Mine SSD version works well about 260 MB/s, would be more on SATA3.

    How to get 260MBps?

    Mine just 175MBps on Ubuntu 14.4

  • ChrisszzyyChrisszzyy Member
    edited April 2016

    It's definitely not just you; I'm having the EXACT same issue on my SC and XC servers; funny how they are both part of the 'Online.net Labs' platform. Looks like their custom designed platform has a major issue with the BIOS.

    I've had this issue on two server now (They swapped me to another earlier today; same issue):

    $ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/sda2/tmp/test1.img bs=1G count=1 oflag=dsync
    1+0 records in
    1+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1,1 GB) copied, 26,9245 s, 39,9 MB/s

    It's quite low and it seems to fluctuate a LOT, and that is in rescue mode!

    Shame this wasn't something that was tested before deploying their 2016 range...

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    Do you get the port manifesting itself as SATA III on any other OS / OS version? There is an issue with I believe C236 chipset, SATA and CentOS 7.1, it works perfectly fine on 6.7 and 7.0 though.

  • exception0x876exception0x876 Member, Host Rep, LIR
    edited April 2016

    @Clouvider said:
    Do you get the port manifesting itself as SATA III on any other OS / OS version? There is an issue with I believe C236 chipset, SATA and CentOS 7.1, it works perfectly fine on 6.7 and 7.0 though.

    The rescue system is Ubuntu 14.04 based and I used Centos 6.7 for my installation. Both have this slow speed. I think the problem is not SATA2 itself, since it should allow to push like 200MB/s without problems.

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    Can you check what motherboard it is ?

  • exception0x876exception0x876 Member, Host Rep, LIR

    @Clouvider said:
    Can you check what motherboard it is ?

    Handle 0x0002, DMI type 2, 15 bytes
    Base Board Information
            Manufacturer: Online Labs
            Product Name: SR
            Version: 42
            Serial Number: 42
            Asset Tag: 42
            Features:
                    Board is a hosting board
                    Board is replaceable
            Location In Chassis: 
            Chassis Handle: 0x0003
            Type: Motherboard
            Contained Object Handles: 0
    
  • ChrisszzyyChrisszzyy Member
    edited April 2016

    Stupid question; if the boards used in these servers are custom specific to Online.net, will they likely be the developers of the BIOS running on them? In other words, will the time frame which has been quoted likely be accurate?

    I received a similar time-frame for a fix of a couple of weeks when contacting support. I'm very surprised this got through system testing to be honest, especially if it's custom hardware.

    What is even more surprising though is I've seen a few benchmarks around from users who have the SSD version of the XC 2016 and their benchmarks are over 150MB/s.
    You'd think a BIOS issue like this would affect all drive types since they all use the same interface (SATA) wouldn't you?

  • akhfaakhfa Member

    I just get around 60 MB/s on my SC 2016

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/testfile bs=1G count=1 oflag=direct
    1+0 records in
    1+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1,1 GB) copied, 16,847 s, 63,7 MB/s
    
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/testfile bs=1M count=1000 conv=fdatasync
    1000+0 records in
    1000+0 records out
    1048576000 bytes (1,0 GB) copied, 17,7111 s, 59,2 MB/s
    
  • I was thinking about getting the XC SSD this month, but this BIOS issue sounds pretty jank.

  • akhfaakhfa Member

    How much HDD speed do you expect in normal case? Is it about 100 MB/s ?

  • SetsuraSetsura Member
    edited April 2016

    This is on a 10000 year old failing WD green 1TB drive

    dd bs=1M count=1000 if=/dev/zero of=test conv=fdatasync
    1000+0 records in
    1000+0 records out
    1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 9.40661 s, 111 MB/s
    

    I'd say you should expect at least 100MB/s yeah.

  • Mine XC 2016 SSD gets 213 MB/s under load on Proxmox host machine ;)

  • They've added FreeBSD in installer. How were you able to get CentOS 6.7 on this machine ? It's simply impossible...

  • lbftlbft Member

    The port is not running properly (SATA II instead of SATA III) and offer lower performance that it should.

    SATA 2 has a maximum speed of 300 MB/s. That comes nowhere near explaining a drive running at 12.5 MB/s.

  • exception0x876exception0x876 Member, Host Rep, LIR
    edited April 2016

    @Spacedust said:
    They've added FreeBSD in installer. How were you able to get CentOS 6.7 on this machine ? It's simply impossible...

    I installed it via a rescue system.

    The support guy offered a full refund. Lets see if I will get it.

  • But how - there is no KVM, no graphics card :( Even if you move from different machine like XC SSD 2015 it boots, but disables network port immediately.

  • SpacedustSpacedust Member
    edited April 2016

    See my result:

    dd bs=1M count=1000 if=/dev/zero of=test conv=fdatasync 1000+0 records in 1000+0 records out 1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 4.32178 s, 243 MB/s

  • SATA II is limited to about 250 MB/s. You will never get 300 MB/s on SATA II. SATA III is limited to about 560 MB/s.

  • Which SSD's are you using ? Mine is SAMSUNG MZ7LN256HCHP-00000 256 GB.

  • exception0x876exception0x876 Member, Host Rep, LIR

    @Spacedust said:
    But how - there is no KVM, no graphics card :( Even if you move from different machine like XC SSD 2015 it boots, but disables network port immediately.

    https://www.skytale.net/blog/archives/38-Installing-CentOS-6-from-a-rescue-system.html

  • WOW - I didn't try that. Just asked Online.net how are they doing and they've said still no progress. Looking at the CentOS 7 boot options like "baremetal" I thought it must be something special to be able to boot.

  • FreeBSD is gone in the installer ;(

  • @exception0x876 said:

    @Spacedust said:
    But how - there is no KVM, no graphics card :( Even if you move from different machine like XC SSD 2015 it boots, but disables network port immediately.

    https://www.skytale.net/blog/archives/38-Installing-CentOS-6-from-a-rescue-system.html

    It worked !

    Speeds are great:

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/test bs=1M count=100 conv=fdatasync
    100+0 records in
    100+0 records out
    104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 0.649175 s, 162 MB/s
    
    hdparm -t /dev/sda
    
    /dev/sda:
     Timing buffered disk reads: 804 MB in  3.00 seconds = 267.75 MB/sec
    
  • xyzxyz Member
    edited May 2016

    [Bumping thread]

    Out of interest, has anyone here gotten BIOS updates (or fixes) yet, or are the issues just being palmed off?
    I haven't bothered following up with Online.net yet, but just wanted to know.

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