firmware upgrade has reduced drive performance - P4510 8.0TB

[trubans]

Howdy All,

I have 86 of these P4510 8.0TB drives which I've been performance testing over the past week and one of the steps I completed yesterday involved updating the FW of a drive which seems to have severely reduced its write speed.........below are the results of the before and after.

root@bak01-speed:~# nvme --list
Node SN Model Namespace Usage Format FW Rev
--------------------- -------------------- ---------------------------------------- --------- -------------------------- ---------------- --------
/dev/nvme0n1 PHLJ052302QL8P0HGN INTEL SSDPE2KX080T8 1 8.00 TB / 8.00 TB 512 B + 0 B VDV10170
/dev/nvme1n1 CN0WW56VFCP0039901HD Dell BOSS-N1 1 480.04 GB / 480.04 GB 512 B + 0 B 11131069
root@bak01-speed:~#

root@bak01:/# time dd if=/dev/zero of=/ssd1/50g.test oflag=direct status=progress bs=1M count=51200
50579111936 bytes (51 GB, 47 GiB) copied, 20 s, 2.5 GB/s
51200+0 records in
51200+0 records out
53687091200 bytes (54 GB, 50 GiB) copied, 20.8715 s, 2.6 GB/s

real 0m20.873s
user 0m0.032s
sys 0m19.615s
root@bak01:/#

root@bak01-speed:/# nvme --list
Node SN Model Namespace Usage Format FW Rev
--------------------- -------------------- ---------------------------------------- --------- -------------------------- ---------------- --------
/dev/nvme0n1 PHLJ052302QL8P0HGN INTEL SSDPE2KX080T8 1 8.00 TB / 8.00 TB 512 B + 0 B VDV10184
/dev/nvme1n1 CN0WW56VFCP0039901HD Dell BOSS-N1 1 480.04 GB / 480.04 GB 512 B + 0 B 11131069
root@bak01-speed:/#
root@bak01-speed:/# time dd if=/dev/zero of=/intel/50g.test oflag=direct status=progress bs=1M count=51200
53632565248 bytes (54 GB, 50 GiB) copied, 51 s, 1.1 GB/s
51200+0 records in
51200+0 records out
53687091200 bytes (54 GB, 50 GiB) copied, 51.0516 s, 1.1 GB/s

real 0m51.056s
user 0m0.031s
sys 0m3.825s
root@bak01-speed:/#

I saw in some of your posts that you can not downgrade FW on these drives is that correct? If so am I missing something in my testing as I've never seen a massive degradation in performance on anything I've updated in the past.

Cheers,

Steve

[SolidigmGleb]

Hello trubans,

Thank you for contacting Solidigm™ Support.

We would like to inform you, that Solidigm™ Storage Tool and Solidigm™ Bootable Firmware Update Tool can not download old firmware versions or reinstall the old firmware of the Solid State Drives.

Regarding your issue:

There are many factors that can affect performance results, including writing. Below, we would like to provide a few factors for you to check:

1.)Depending on the system configuration, some platforms share bandwidth across storage connectors. Confirm the drive is using the optimal connection and BIOS settings for best performance options by referencing the system user manual.

NOTE

Drives under test should be connected to the system as a secondary (non OS) drive. Some capabilities noted below may require the Solidigm™ Windows* Driver for Client SSDs or Data Center NVMe* Microsoft Windows* Drivers to be installed if supported. Confirm support on the driver page for your specific Solidigm™ SSD

2.) Download the application. Solidigm™ Storage Tool. There is also an option to run a Diagnostic Scan. A full scan should be done to make sure the product is in a healthy state. See SST User Guide for more details.

3.) Formatting the disk can help recover performance in some cases.

NOTE	Always backup data regularly and before proceeding as this process removes all data from the drive.

When to Run a Low-Level Format or Secure Erase on Solidigm™ (formerly Intel®) Solid State Drives and...

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us via  our Support Hub . 

Kind regards,
Gleb
Solidigm Customer Support

[trubans]

Hi Gleb,

Thank you for the reply and assistance much appreciated.

As suggested I did a format of the drive and it has returned to it's original performance again (thank-you)

I'm a little worried about updating drives we have in production tho as they are part of a large zfs pool and are not easily rotated out to format....will have to run some tests on my spare system to see the affects of a FW update on a configured zpool.

Cheers,

Steve

[SolidigmGleb]

Dear trubans,

Thank you for the information provided. Please, find this article that may be helpful for you: How To Test Performance Of The Solidigm™ (Formerly Intel®) Client SSD Series.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,
Gleb
Solidigm Customer Support