Quantcast
Channel: ServeTheHome.com Forums - RAID Controllers and Host Bus Adapters
Viewing all 147 articles
Browse latest View live
↧

SAS SFF-8644 to SFF-8470 cables ?.

April 29, 2013, 12:39 am
$
0
0
Hi Guys,

Anyone know where I can source SAS HD SFF-8644 (ext) to SFF-8470 (CX4 ext) cables.

I am looking to connect a LSi 9202-16e to a Dell MD1000 JBOD chassis.

Thanks
RB
↧
Search

Comparison of Intel C602 and LSI 2308 on a SuperMicro server

April 29, 2013, 6:53 pm
$
0
0
Trying to decide what kind of machine to get for a Ubuntu / ZFS (on Linux) install. The drives will be 3.5" SATA drives (no SSD for cost reasons), and most likely Green drives (again, for cost reasons).

What I would like to understand is, if there is any advantage of having an LSI 2308 controller in the server over/in addition to the Intel C602 chipset for driving the SATA drives.
↧
↧

Controller for Dell C6100

April 30, 2013, 10:50 pm
$
0
0
Can anyone shed some light on which branded controllers will work with any drives whether it's SAS or SATA?

For example, the Dell Y8Y69 mezzanine card doesn't play ball with anything except for Dell drives. At least the 8 that I have would not. I had 600gb IBM SAS drives all set to go into the server, but when I installed them, the controller saw them but wouldn't let me do anything with them as far as creating a stripe set out of them.

I want to get a card that's got 2 external SAS ports. Internal ports don't really matter as I want to build a rather large external array. I don't have experience with this sort of thing, since I am mostly a software person.

I am trying to avoid using the mezzanine slot because I am sticking the 40gb IB adapters in those, so I am looking that will fit into a C6100 node's PCI-e slot; low profile, short length, etc.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
↧

IBM M5014 - Convert RAID0 to RAID5?

May 1, 2013, 7:15 pm
$
0
0
Hey guys,

So I took your advice and bought myself a M5014. I flashed the firmware to the LSI firmware and everything works perfectly.

Right now I have 7 drives in a RAID0 configuration, with an 8th added and not configured. I want to make an 8-drive RAID5 array, using that last drive as the spare. I can't find any options in MegaRAID Storage Manager to convert the virtual disk - is it not possible to do that? Worst case scenario, I can backup all the data on it, delete the configuration and redo it, then move the data back. But that would take a while and I'd prefer not to do that if possible.

Thanks.
↧

New IBM 5015 BBU charge issue

May 2, 2013, 2:22 am
$
0
0
Hi Guys,

I'm new here, and new to RAID controllers in general, Googled myself to this nice place, which seemed to be the best place on the internet to ask.

My problem is, that my brand new IBM ServeRAID M5015 controller is having some wierd charge issues with the BBU (IBBU08)
It reaches around 70-76% charge and then states that " Battery Charge Complete" i have tried to run it through a few "Relearn" tasks, and it discharges fine and then reaches somewhere in the 70% range again where it completes it's business.

I did get som warnings about battery temperature reaching 50c, the first few days, but that didn't stop it from charging all the way up to 75%. Now with the cooling fixed and the battery temp running in the mid 40c range, it still stops the charge 1/4 the way short of 100%

I have tried taking the BBU off the card, start up the server, shut it down and put i back on to see if that would help the controller "forget" about the charge level, but it didn't help.

Any ideas to what can cause this, and what i can do to fix it?

my setup is as follows:

intel i7 2600K CPU
Intel Desktop Board DZ68BC
32768 MB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM

IBM ServeRAID M5015 controller with 512mb cache and IBBU08 BBU
Intel Pro/1000 PT Quad Port Server adapter

8x WD RE4 7200Rpm 2TB SATA drives in RAID5 (WD2003FYYS)
3x OCZ SSD's running off the motherboards onboard controllers

Fractal Design Define R4 midi-tower
Corsair H100i CPU watercooler (exausts from case through 2x 120mm fans in top)
3x Corsair AP140 Quiet 140mm case fans (two intakes in front, one exaust)
Corsair AX750W Gold PSU

BIOS Version on the controller:
3.27.00_44.12.05.00_0x05270000
Firmware Package version:
12.13.0-0154

OS: Windows Server 2012
MegaRAID Storage Manager - 13.01.04.00 (client build 2.90)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

- Herngaard
↧
↧

what's the point of flashing the raid controller into it mode?

May 3, 2013, 8:37 am
$
0
0
why don't simply connect all drivers to the mother board? what's the benefit of having an IT mode raid controller? just for the extra sata port?
↧

please help, ZFS or hardware raid10.. Thought I wanted ZFS but not so sure now :(

May 4, 2013, 1:00 am
$
0
0
So I've been messing with an all-in-1 setup ESXi box with Nexenta and to a smaller extent, openindiana. My plan was a RAID10 style setup with ZFS for the reliability and robustness, the problem I've run into is the complexity is quite high.

Anyway, my primary, number one objective is reliability, #2 is speed, and #3 is proper use of available resources per watt (I'd like to run the least machines possible while still having an active ESX box).

After lots of tinkering I've become a bit wary of putting all my wifes important business data (she's a photographer) on something a couple layers deep.

My question is: What are the negatives of just buying an inexpensive 8 port SAS RAID card (say like the IBM 1050 or similar) plugging it into the HP SAS expander I have and then loading the machine up with my 8 2TB drives in RAID10? This allows me to use my SAS expander without fear of errors (apparently SATA disks + SAS expander + ZFS can cause some problems), it also allows me to install ESX directly on the array, and put VMs on the array as well. It also seems like it will be vastly easier to manage and setup.

Basically I love to still play "IT" guy but I also get sick reasonably often and I can't have her data becoming unavailable to her until I figure out how to fix it simply because its so complex. I just feel like everytime I get close to getting the whole thing playing nice then something else goes wrong. Being able to just drop the card in the server, make the array, and have ESX see it and be happy would totally make my day to say the least. Leveraging that SAS expander I already own would be excellent as well!

Ben

PS, one last question.. If I were to go the hardware route then how would you guys suggest sharing out the storage to the clients? Build a VM, make a VMDK on top of the array and share out from the VMDK? Seems like the simplest and most portable option.
↧

lsi 9206-16e on ebay

May 10, 2013, 1:40 am
↧
Search

SAS2208 Initiator Target firmware?

May 10, 2013, 7:32 am
$
0
0
Bought a M5120 to play with. Does SAS2208 IT firmware exist for this, or is IR the only flavor floating around?
↧
↧

LSI 9211-8i & TRIM

May 12, 2013, 1:53 am
$
0
0
I had a spare 9211-8i IT lying around for some time and now an 840 Pro SSD, so I was curious whether TRIM actually works with those two. I booted up Linux and the drive actually seems to advertise this functionality with a discard block size of 32MB. Did someone try out if this works or if the controller would just eat those commands with the drive never seeing them?
↧

esxi local storage upgrade - request advice/comments

May 18, 2013, 11:21 am
$
0
0
Hello to All,

I'm looking to upgrade local storage on esxi host, and after reviewing the great posts and articles on this site I would like to

ask for any advice and comments from more experienced posters here to hopefully avoid any dead-ends as I move forward. I would

also like to give a big "Thank You" to all the contributors - this is by far the most useful site I have found for this type of

info.

The esxi host is for home use only, and current setup is as follows:

Supermicro X9SCM-iif
Xeon E3-1230v2
32g ram

Adaptec 5805 w/bbu 8x4tb Hitachi 7k4000 raid 5 (passed through to Win7 vm for media storage, backed to separate server)

Adaptec 5805 w/bbu 4x500gb Seagate raid 10 (vm backups, low i/o vms)

motherboard sata ports 4xCrucial M4 256gb (10-15 vm's)

Workload is probably light compared to most here - streaming to media extenders, vm's for family members, video

encoding/processing, usenet indexing with small db, torrents, test vm's.

One of the Crucial M4s failed, which got me thinking about redundancy on main datastores. After SSD exchange, I setup a raid 10

volume with the M4's, which performed poorly and experienced drive dropouts.

My primary goal is to have redundancy for main vm datastore using the Crucial M4's and increase read/write/iops performance as

well. I prefer a hardware raid solution vs hba + software raid.

The tentative plan is to use LSI 9271-8icc + cachevault to host 2 raid 10 arrays, 4x500gb seagate and 4x256gb M4 SSD.

Uncertainties:

1 - Am I overlooking less expensive option that delivers same performance? This is overkill for current needs, but I prefer to

invest in a stable 3-5yr solution rather than annual equipment churn. Don't currently need Cachecade, but Fastpath would benefit

2 - will the M4 hold up? Could not find long-term use examples. Budget will not permit new raid controller AND drives

3 - will the Adaptec 5805 and LSI controllers co-exist same motherboard

Thanks for any guidance you can offer...
↧

How to confirm link speeds with SAS2008 in IT mode

May 19, 2013, 6:55 pm
$
0
0
Can someone experience with LSI-related tools suggest a way to confirm link speeds on a SAS2008-based controller (M1015) with SATA disks connected via an unknown expander - an expander built into a chassis backplane that I cannot completely identify?

Using Debian Linux (Proxmox), running with IT mode firmware on the card and standard Linux mpt2sas drivers. The backplane/expander is the build-in expander in an HP DL180 G6.

Just looking for suggestions about the right tools to:
(a) confirm link speeds (did the drives link at SATA-600, 300 or 150 speeds - they are SATA-III drives)
(b) confirm that expander link is using all for channels
(c) any other info I can pick up...

Thanks in advance for anything shared.
↧

LSI 9205-8e? Anyone Try these?

May 23, 2013, 6:16 am
$
0
0
Saw this on the bay: LSI SAS RAID Card 6GB s Controller SAS9205 8E 9205 8E | eBay

LSI 2308 based
2x external SFF-8088 ports.

LSI 9205-8e Specs

IO Controller LSISAS2308, Fusion MPT 2.0
Storage Connectivity; Data Transfer Rates 8 ports, 6Gb/s SAS 2.1 Compliant
SAS Bandwidth Half Duplex
600 MB/s per lane
Port Configurations 8 ea, x1 ports (individual drives)
2 ea, x4 wide ports
Host Bus x8 lane, PCI Express 2.0
PCI Data Burst Transfer Rates Half Duplex
x8, PCIe, 4000 MB/s
Physical Dimensions Low Profile (2.7” x 6.6”)
Connectors Two Mini-SAS external connectors (SFF8088)
↧
↧

IBM m1015 Problems...

May 23, 2013, 5:17 pm
$
0
0
well let's dive right in.
installed the IBM M1015 on the top PCIe in the motherboard (Intel DZ77RE-75K - BIOS version is the latest- 0064).
the end result would be having 4-6 4TB drives (for now) working in RAID 10.

this is what i get when i start the machine:
LSI MegaRAID SAS-MFI BIOS
Version 4.31.00 (June 08 2012)
F/W initializing devices
FW Package 20.10.1-0119

at first i only had 2 drives so i started by configuring it through webBIOS for RAID 1 (starting easy).
I'm using X2 HGST 4TB 7200rpm.

OS is win 7 ultimate X64.
installed win 7 drivers, driver version in device manager says: 6.504.4.0 dated to 05/10/2012 from LSI Corp.

MSM version was 12.10.01.02

it seemed to be working since i saw the drive in Windows and was able to work with it, only i keep getting this message when opening MSM:




if it matters, i initialized the drive in Windows Disk Managmnent and not in MSM.
anyways, i got the 2 other drives and i wanted to try the whole 4 drives array in RAID 10. that's when it really got worse.

when i have the 4 drives connected i can't get pass the F/W initialization screen. when it finishes the percentage count it just freezes after the 'FW Package 20.10.1-0119' line and starts beeping like crazy, only reset or power down can get it out of it.

so i said, maybe i'll try to delete the former RAID 1 array to get everything to square one and start it all over again. so i disconnected the 2 new drives and was able to delete the former RAID 1 array in the Web BIOS- weirdly, i had no mouse when i got to Web BIOS and it is like this ever since...
it didn't help. when i tried connecting the new drives again the same thing happened, freeze and beeps.

so i figured, maybe there's something wrong with one of the new drives? so i pulled out no.4.
this time i got through the whole POST process (drive number 3 was identified as JBOD automatically) but in the end, instead of entering Web BIOS i got a black screen with a blinking cursor on the bottom left...
if i'm not trying to get into Web BIOS, it starts windows normally, as always i get the fatal error message as mentioned above.

i was able to convert this drive to GPT and make a simple volume out of it in Windows Disk Management with no problems, just as if it was connected to a SATA port on my Motherboard.

so, i tried doing the same with drive no.4. i disconnected drive no.3 (the recent JBOD drive) and connected no.4.
this time, instead of a blinking cursor on a black screen, i was able to get into Web BIOS!
but, when i pressed 'start' on the first Web BIOS screen to choose an adapter it got crazy. it freezes or parts of the screen disappears and practically, i had no other choice but to reset the system. one weird thing to mention is that sometimes i get the mouse working here again for a few seconds before it freezes...

again, like with drive no.3, when i didn't try to get into Web BIOS windows started normally and i was able to configure the drive to work as a separate drive.
of course when i tried hooking all 4 drives again i still get the freeze and the beeps...


so to conclude, so far we have 4 working drives, 2 of them can work in RAID, the 2 others can only work as JBOD since i can't even get into Web BIOS to configure them, but they can't all work together anyway. only drives 1,2,3 or 1,2,4.

so i tried disconnecting drives 1 and 2 while having 3 and 4 plugged in, maybe i'll find something...
well, the weirdest thing happened, i got this screen:



when i tried entering the configuration utility it froze on this screen:



and i got the same old beeps. damn...

then, i unplugged drive no.3 so i would only have drive 4 plugged in.
got the same screen saying all the disks from my previous configuration are gone, this time it did got me into Web BIOS though i had nothing to do there since i only had one drive connected as JBOD...

so i could get into windows and have that one drive working.
i tried the same thing with only drive no.3 connected but i couldn't get into Web BIOS this time, instead i got the black screen and the blinking cursor again!
when i didn't tried to get into Web BIOS i was able to get into windows normally (of course with the regular fatal error message...).

so i thought, maybe it's the SFF-8087 cable that is defected?
and to my surprise, when i tried connecting drive no.4 with the end of the SFF-8087 that was connected to drive no.3 (let's call it cable no.3) i got the same black screen and blinking cursor that i got with drive no.3!
to be sure i tried connecting cable no.4 to drive no.4 again to see if i can get into Web BIOS like before. i could, but i got this screen:



i don't know what to make of this...

tried connecting drives 3 and 4 with cables 1 and 2- got black screen and blinking cursor if attempted to enter Web BIOS (better than freeze and beeps i got with cables 3 and 4), if i didn't try to get into Web BIOS, then i got to windows normally.
tried connecting drives 1 and 2 with cables 3 and 4- got everything working like it was originally with drives 1 and 2 connected to cables 1 and 2.

so i have no idea if it's the cable. seems unlikely.


last thing i tried was to switch the SAS end of the cable to the second slot on the M1015.
when having all 4 drives connected i got the black screen and blinking cursor if attempted to enter Web BIOS (better than freeze and beeps i got with the other SAS slot), if i didn't try to get into Web BIOS i managed, for the first time, to get into windows and see all 4 drives! although not in the configuration i wanted since i couldn't get into Web BIOS.
and of course, i still get the fatal error message...

but! i was able to configure the whole array as i wanted through MSM!! HURRAY!
one drive group with 2 spans in it, 2 drives per span.





so, now i'm transferring data to the new array. question is, what the hell is wrong here? why doesn't it work as it should and how to fix it?
what's with that fatal error message i keep getting?

any help would be much appreciated since i'm afraid this whole thing could crumble on a moment notice...

thank you for taking the time to get through this ordeal :)

Eli
↧

Need Help with a DELL Perc H810 Controller

May 24, 2013, 9:18 am
$
0
0
I Purchased a Dell Perc H810 to use in my PC Server. The motherboard does not post at all. The Error code is FF.

I removed all the PCIe cards but the Graphics and the Dell.

I moved the Dell to every slot including the x4 slot. No luck.

I changed the bios to Safe Default, Optimized default.

I changed the memory to slower memory.

I can't get it to post. Is the Dell bad or does it just not work in anything but a Dell Server?
↧
Search

HP P410 Pass-through?

May 27, 2013, 2:44 pm
$
0
0
I recently purchased one of those HP DL180 G6's off ebay with 14xdrive bays and an HP P410 controller to act as a home based virtual environment. I am running into a problem attempting to use this controller in any VM using pass-through mode. Nexenta and Windows based vms fail to boot with the controller as a PCI pass-through device. NAS4FREE boots, but doesn't list any disks connected through the controller.

VT-d is enabled in the bios. BIOS and P410 firmware are flashed to the latest. Any ideas? Is this controller even compatible with direct path i/o in vsphere esxi 5.1 update 1?

Steve
↧

Cross-flashing M5015: The latest working LSI-firmware?

May 28, 2013, 12:11 am
$
0
0
First, greetings to all forum-members from passer-by!

I just obtained IBM M5015 controller and was scared by terribly long boot-time, so I started looking for some info and found this forum by chance. I have a few questions, but please be patient with me, because I'm complete noob concerning cross-flashing, never done this, and never heard about it untill now...

I would like to flash the latest LSI-firmware (4.10 p2, 12.13.0-0154), but I have read somewhere on this forum some versions can not be flashed on M5015, they simply do not work (oem-controller is detected, or something like that). So my question is:
Q1: which is the last LSI-firmware version working with M5015?

Q2: what the hell is "SBR" (or is it SRB)? I have read it must be wiped out and new loaded. Where can I find the new/latest one?

Q3: That "megarec" tool used for cross-flashing, is it a part of standard LSI-tools (MegaCLI or StorCLI)? If not, where can I find/download it?

Q4 (which should be probably Q1), please be honest with me and tell me: is there some serious danger I could do something wrong and render the raid-controller completely irreversibely unusable? Did this ever happen to someone?
↧
↧

strange problems with Dell Perc 5i

May 28, 2013, 4:38 am
$
0
0
Guys I have a very strange problem that I can't explain. Our home file server is a Dell Precision 390 it runs a Perc 5i I have two virtual raid 5 disk groups created. The first disk group is all Samsung 2TB drives and the second disk group is Seagate 500 gigs drives. The first raid 5 has 5 hard drives so it takes up all 4 connections on the first slot and uses one connection on the second slot. I have network shares created on both groups if I copy data to both virtual disk groups the server crashes and reboots. If I disable use BBU everything works fine since I'm turning off the cache. Now I have already tried 2 different perc 5i controllers I've ran a diag on the battery and the levels are good. I even went as far as pulling this card and hooking everything up to another system that I have with Windows 7 on it and needless to say it performed great no crashes. So I than reconnect everything up to the Precision I forgot to connect power to one of the drives and the array came up in a degraded state with the controller running a rebuild on the drive I forgot to plug in. Now here is where it gets strange during the rebuild I decided to copy data to both virtual disk groups and it worked fine. So I just ran another test copying to both disk groups and the server is crashing again I am running Windows Server 2012 which has built in driver support for the Perc 5i. Also one other side note if offline any one of the drives hooked to the first disk group which is all Samsung's everything works fine. So guys I am at a complete lost please advise.
↧

How to boot win8 in GPT mode with 9211?

June 5, 2013, 7:10 am
$
0
0
I have a lsi 9211-8i and flash it to IT mode ,now ,I connect a Hard disk on this card and format this disk in GPT mode , when I boot with motherboard efi shell and install win8 ,it needs me to install a driver to detect a disk , I have already copy the LSI 9211 win8 drivers to disk ,and it has no effect , anyone knows hao to install win8 on the disk (connect to 9211) with GPT partitions? Thanks for any help !


PS : I can install win8 on GPT with MB sata controller successfully ,but when I install on LSI 9211,it needs a driver ,which driver to choose ?

MB : intel dx79si
LSI fw version : P16 (it)
↧

Error while flashing M1015 to IT mode

June 11, 2013, 6:07 pm
$
0
0
I am building a new storage system, this is the specs:

Quote:
Chasis:
SUPERMICRO SuperChassis CSE-846A-R1200B Black 4U Rackmount Server Case 1200W Redundant

3x Sata card:
IBM ServeRaid M1015

CPU:
Intel Xeon E3 1230 V2 Quad Core Processor 3.3GHZ 8MB LGA1155 69W Retail Box

Mobo:
Supermicro MBD-X9SCM LGA1155 C204 DDR3 ECC 6SATA 4PCIE 2GBE IPMI 9USB2.0 mATX Motherboard

Ram:
Supermicro MEM-DR380L-HL01-EU13 8GB DDR3-1333 240PT 1.5V DIMM CL9 ECC Server Memory

SSD for OS:
Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5in SATA3 MDX Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD

I looked at lot of guides through this forum and other forums and came up with the following steps: (Let me know if I miss anything)

Quote:
<Boot off DOS USB stick>

Type in the following exactly:

megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0

<reboot, go in UEFI boot>
FSx:
execute: Shell_Full.efi


sas2flash.efi -l Flashlog.txt -o -f 2118it.bin
sas2flash.efi -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx
<reboot>

Done!

I get an issue right when I try to use the megarec command. This is the error I get:




I also tried on another system, and I get a similar but different error:




I have 3 cards, they all do the same thing. I also tried different PCIe slot. Only 1 card was in the system at a time.

Also on a side note, two of the cards have the same SAS address, will that be an issue?
↧
Viewing all 147 articles
Browse latest View live
Search