Intel P3700 blinking orange led

[GGil]

Hi All,

I've recently bought Intel's P3700 800GB SSD to our Lenovo x3650 M5 (E5-2630 v3 dual CPU) server, running Ubuntu.

Performance is not as high as it suppose to be - hdparm -tT --direct shows around 1.6GB/sec. The same drive on a friends PC shows the 2.8GB/sec it suppose to be.

While trying to debug it I've noticed that the first orange led is blinking steadily - half a second on, half a second off, etc... It is starting when Ubuntu is booting even when the drive is not mounted so there is no traffic.

I tried to shutdown the server and unplug the power sources - but no luck there.

After installing the disk i ran dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=1M oflag=direct, like it suggested in the NVMe Driver Reference Guide - maybe I put the SSD is some kind of bad state?

Any other ideas? Maybe firmware? how do I find out which firmware I have? Unfortunately Intel does not support Ubuntu for the SSD Data Center Tool.

I'm do not know if the blinking causes the performance issue, but it is odd.

Thanks,

Gil.

[GGil]

First of all, thank you for the quick response,

1. The Linux package contains RPM installation files which doesn't suite Ubuntu. Is there an Ubuntu/Debian installation somewhere?

2. If it is true I do not understand why there is I/O activity. It is a fresh install of Ubuntu and I didn't even mount the SSD so I do not expect any traffic towards it. I'll try to investigate it from the OS side.

[GGil]

UPDATE

I've unpacked the .rpm files and they are running fine. I spotted that my SSD is on an "EnduranceAnalyzer" mode, and it is waiting for an hour of workload for endurance analysis. Can this cause the performance issues I have? Is there a way to disable this analyzer? I'm running a random read/write workload for over an hour and the analyzer still doesn't have sufficient data.

This is the output of isdct show -a -intelssd 0, is there something bad here?

AggregationThreshold : 0

AggregationTime : 0

ArbitrationBurst : 0

Bootloader : 8B1B0131

CoalescingDisable : 1

DevicePath : /dev/nvme0n1

DeviceStatus : Healthy

EndToEndDataProtCapabilities : 17

EnduranceAnalyzer : Media Workload Indicators have reset values. Run 60+ minute workload prior to running the endurance analyzer.

ErrorString :

Firmware : 8DV10171

FirmwareUpdateAvailable : The selected Intel SSD contains current firmware as of this tool release.

HighPriorityWeightArbitration : 0

IOCompletionQueuesRequested : 30

IOSubmissionQueuesRequested : 30

Index : 0

Intel : True

IntelGen3SATA : False

IntelNVMe : True

InterruptVector : 0

LBAFormat : 0

LatencyTrackingEnabled : False

LowPriorityWeightArbitration : 0

MaximumLBA : 1562824367

MediumPriorityWeightArbitration : 0

MetadataSetting : 0

ModelNumber : INTEL SSDPEDMD800G4

NVME_1_0_Supported : True

NVME_1_2_Supported : False

NVMeControllerID : 0

NVMePowerState : 0

NamespaceId : 1

NativeMaxLBA : 1562824367

NumErrorLogPageEntries : 63

NumLBAFormats : 6

OEM : Generic

PCILinkGenSpeed : 3

PCILinkWidth : 4

PowerGovernorMode : 0 25W

Product : Fultondale

ProductFamily : Intel SSD DC P3700 Series

ProductProtocol : NVME

ProtectionInformation : 0

ProtectionInformationLocation : 0

SMARTHealthCriticalWarningsConfiguration : 0

SMBusAddress : 106

SectorSize : 512

SerialNumber : CVFT6042001W800CGN

TCGSupported : False

TempThreshold : 85

TimeLimitedErrorRecovery : 0

TrimSupported : True

VolatileWriteCacheEnabled : False

WriteAtomicityDisableNormal : 0

Thanks,

Gil.

[idata]

Gilsho,

Thanks for replying back and trying the steps provided. We would like you to try the following in order to try to reset the endurance analyzer:

1. Reset SMART Attributes using the reset option.

isdct.exe set –intelssd 2 enduranceanalyzer=reset2. Optionally, remove the SSD and install in test system.3. Apply minimum 60-minute workload to SSD.4. Reinstall SSD in original system if needed. Compute endurance using the show command. You can also specify the EnduranceAnalyzer property specifically using the –display (-d) option.isdct.exe show –a –intelssd 2isdct.exe show –d EnduranceAnalyzer –intelssd 25. Read the Endurance Analyzer value which represents the drive's life expectancy in years.About the performance on this SSD, please make sure you are using our https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/23929/Intel-SSD-Data-Center-Family-for-NVMe-Drivers NVMe driver.We will be waiting for your response, have a nice day.

[GGil]

Hi,

I've reset the Endurance Analyzer, and rerun my workload and got the "wear prediction" - so thanks for that.

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 with 4.2.0 Kernel, so NVME driver was compiled as a module by default:

filename: /lib/modules/4.2.0-27-generic/kernel/drivers/block/nvme.koversion: 1.0license: GPLauthor: Matthew Wilcox <</span>mailto:willy@linux.intel.com willy@linux.intel.com>srcversion: C1E91880F29AB152ED05CF5alias: pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc01sc08i02*

1. The orange light is still blinking even though there is no traffic to the SSD.

2. I'll try to be more clear about the bandwidth problem I'm talking about:

I'm running fio with simple synchronous read of a big file in the P3700. I had the chance to run it on a PC (i7-5930K) which showed the desired 2.8GB/sec bandwidth. On the other hand, on our new server (2x Xeon E5-2630v3) for the same test I get a 1.5GB, the same happened on another server I used to work on (4x E5-4650v2). I wonder what is different in the server that doesn't fully utilize the fast storage bandwidth.

[idata]

Glisho,

We would like to know the model of each server you have tested so far. It seems it could be related to some configuration from each server and we would like to learn more about the specs on each one.We will be waiting for your response