lsi 9750-8i with server 2016?

sdadept

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 3, 2004
Messages
433
server 2016 doesn't recognize my lsi 9750 even though it sorta works (sorta not as it blue screens here and there). Anyone have success with any drivers for this or do I just need to buy a new card? Its on a server I got on ebay and hooked through SAS to 12 hot swap SATA bays.
 
found some drivers for 2012. Going to try those. Looks like 3ware got bought by lsi... then they got bought by broadcom. Found some old drivers on the broadcom site.
 
Interestingly, I've just created a Server 2016 box and ran into the same issue with my 9750-8i. The Controller works, performance is reasonable, but I have other issues that I'm not sure if they are drive or controller related. First I installed the 2012 R2 drivers that I found on the broadcom website and it installed without any errors. The 3Ware web management works, and shows the status of each drive and the health of the array, although Windows is reporting the RAID ports (always different port) as failed, so I have error messages flooding my event viewer error log. When I went into device manager and I checked for the controller, I could see the LSI 3Ware 9750-8i controller there, so I did a driver update on it from there and it further updated the drivers from Release Year 2012 to 2013. The errors are still there though.

On the other hand I am using some Seagate Constellation ES.2 drives 7.2K 3TB SAS drives in RAID 10 (4x3TB = 6TB Usable), but the moment the drives spin up, the drives make a funky knocking noise. Not sure why they do that. If I start a verify process the knocking goes away and it sounds like a proper hard drive. The second it becomes idle, the knocking is back. It sounds like very loud seeking in a synchronized pattern. Like a wheel of fortune clicking sound but deeper (not the click of death sound). All 4 drives are doing it so it's unlikely that all 4 are faulty, and they are from different batches with slightly different firmwares too. If I would know how to flash all of them the same firmware I would, but I have no idea how to do it because the drives hide behind the controller.

I'm willing to go down to 2012 R2, that's a solid OS too, but I'm frustrated with the loud knocking seek noise. The noise also happens in the BIOS or any other state when the drives are not being accessed. I've read online that some drives are specifically not designed to be used in RAID configuration and the firmware causes constant seeking or noise, but this shouldn't be the case with a Server SAS drive. I'm baffled.
 
so just an update. I bought another 9750 card and an identical server to the one I have because I was able to at least get this one working. It still says the device manager doesn't recognize it but it works really well so far. All of the benchmarks I've run on it have come up top so I guess there isn't that much of a problem. All of the flakiness that I was experiencing ended up having other explanations (a bad ssd!, like the first time i've ever had that happen). I'm getting ready to bring the server back to the colo after I figure out how to force it to boot the boot drive instead of the raid array.

so at this point windows 2016 server (datacenter edition) is running fine with the 3ware card.

for the record, the server this is running on i bought on ebay for $934 and has 192gb ram, 2x8core xeons (with hyperthreading 32 logicals), 4 2tb drives running in raid 5 and 2 256gb ssds raid 1 (boot), 2 2tb ssds running in raid 1 (VMs).

qHIm3vz.jpg
 
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You made my day when I saw this topic. How is your progress, did it work properly? What issues have you had?

I have a 9750 as well, running on 2008R2 and its time to swap to 2016, because the limited support on 8th gen intel supermicro mobos. A new controller is rather expensive (and the BBU, etc), and the speeds 9750 provide are more than enough for me.

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nice server btw!
BTW could you please provide the driver version / firmware version / codeset version you're using?

I'm unable to find any support for the 9750-8i except for this page:
https://www.broadcom.com/support/kn...upported-for-the-lsi-3ware-and-megaraid-contr
 
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Hi, I'm using 9750-16i4e on Windows 10 with EMC disks HUC109060CSS600 600GB 10K formatted to 512b. Controller firmware FH9X 5.12.00.016 / driver 5.01.00.048.
 
My two cents to this topic:

The drivers works on W Server 2016 (1607) without an issue. I'm using two Intel sas expanders, I can confirm that works with 12TB WD gold drives.

I think all these 3ware-->avago-->broadcom haven't improved much and its all based on LSI IP slight evolution + controlling the EOL of products.

Captura.PNG


Unfortunately we are in a software unraid era, were freenas and similar options give great performance, resilience and less power usage.
 
So I don't have a 9750-8i on Server 2016, but I do have a 9265-8i on Windows 10. At some point, I ran Windows Update and upgraded to... 2004 or 20H2 or something, I cannot remember, and immediately upon reboot I was met with BSODs.

It turned out to be some kind of driver problem, and I had to roll back to a previous driver and then manually upgrade it rather than just using the 'updated' driver that came included with the later edition of Windows.

This is the driver I landed on:
1619334391387.png


But if memory serves I had to first manually install an older version (can't remember which) and then upgrade to this one. The important bit was that any attempt to use the provider bundled with Windows resulted in *instant* bullshit BSOD and crashing.

Now the 9750 and 9265, I don't think they share much necessarily, so all of this information could be completely worthless. But perhaps something came bundled on 2016 that shouldn't. No clue really, just passing along another quality LSI experience in hopes something helps.

Good luck!
 
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