Building out zfs with 9211-8i and SC846-E26

I updated the benchmarks here.



After running multiple tests with ST32000444SS, I plugged both ports from the HBA into the primary expander J0 and J1, then performance came up much closer to what would be expected.

I had a issue with a recently bought jbod sas2 enclosure chassis from Supermicro. After *alot* of digging, there seems to be a bug in the recent supermicro expander enclosures (as in recently shipped, few months). If you open your chassis, and look at the front expander board, under the used SAS connector, there is a sticker called WWN. If the last two digits are 7F, you are fine, but if they are FF, the front expander is bugged and won't work properly, dropping drives, timing out. Supermicro has confirmed this, and you need to contact them per email to recieve a new firmware flash & update software.

I ran into the same issue with a SMC SC417E16 chassis and a 9211-8i HBA. The patched firmware solved the problem, as far as I can tell.

I would never have found the patch without the forum, so thanks for being here.

Indiana-Joe said:

I ran into the same issue with a SMC SC417E16 chassis and a 9211-8i HBA. The patched firmware solved the problem, as far as I can tell.

I would never have found the patch without the forum, so thanks for being here.

Click to expand...

Yep, same here. Note that they have updated that kb page with a newer P9 release for the 9211-8i (the first revision had a single patch for the -4i and -8i P8 release, that behaved strangely on the -8i (the bios reporting that it was in IR mode, and a non-working raid menu showing up in the config).

Yea, I flashed directly the P9 version, so at first I thought you did something wrong

in the spirit of the "walking dead" premier and the resurrection of this dead thread.

I too had a similar problem with this setup.

ESXi 4.1 pass-through of a 9211-8i connected to a HP SAS Expander 2.02. Similar multi-path timeouts, disk command timeouts etc.

I flashed the controller with the latest Aug 27 2011 firmware aka P11 and I as a result I have been able to create a 2 vdev (2-way mirror) pool using SATA drives.

peace out and watch out for zombies

I'm into necromancy as well I might give this P11 version a try, and see if it solves my sata issues on a sas backplane. Have to wipe my whole system out anyway.