LSI Owner's Thread (SAS/SATA HBA and RAID cards)

I am trying to get a M1015 or [if I can't find any,] a 9211-8i; would appreciate any help regarding the following questions. Thank you.

#1 Where are you guys getting the M1015's for $75 online? I can't seem to find anything less than $150 & thats on ebay, at that price a retail 9211-8i is only $100 more [with 15% off coupon on newegg.com]!

#2 How do you configure staggered spin with M1015 [when flashed with 9240-8i/9211-8i firmware]?

#3 How many drives does the IBM M1015 support when flashed with 9211-8i I/T firmware? How many drives when flashed with 9240-8i firmware?
*I ask because I need at least 40 devices to be supported by a single HBA, whereas the IBM M1015 only supports 32 devices [even though it is based on the LSI 9240-8i; according to product specifications: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0054.html]. The 9211/9240/M1015 supports 256/64/32 devices respectively, according to their product pages.

#4 Can the M1015 access/pass on SMART, temp, SGPIO/SES-2 [I2C] signals/data when flashed to 9240-8i or 9211-8i I/T firmware?
 
?? I see at least one auction for multiple quantities @ $75 on ebay right now. they come up now and again.

but in general the scarcity of them at the former lower prices can be attributed to enthusiasts having latched onto these things and word about them having gotten out like a virus among the enthusiast and home storage communities, you're relatively late to the party as I first started pointing them out 9 months ago as the next big thing for home server people, when refurbs could be found for $25-$45. same thing happened with HP SAS Expander, when I first discovered their potential for home storage in early 2010 they were around $130-$145 on ebay, created the large FAQ thread here and word slowly spread and prices shot up. just gotta keep your ear to the ground.

as for staggered spinup if it is supported on latest IT-mode firmware (you never know what LSI is going to enable or cripple from rev to rev) then it would be in the boot-time BIOS. but its not really an issue if you have a decent power supply, say 750W if you're driving 24+ disks in a chassis.

as for the other questions I'd recommend you get one and test yourself if someone else doesn't know the answers. we're only talking a sub-$100 pricepoint for a SAS2008 based card, that's a gift horse regardless whether or not it supports SMART passthru or maxes at 32 JBOD (which I would be VERY surprised if it did). And forget about IBM redbooks specs, irrelevant and those are often erroneous anyway which is why I always do my own testing.
 
Last edited:
Of all the H members, your reply was the least expected!

Ya, saw your IBM M1015 F/S thread, guess I was late to that "party" by a couple of months; actually I'm late to the ZFS "party" by about year and a half too [yep, thats how long ago I had the whole thing planned].

Probably you already know this from my other threads, I have a SM SC847E16 chassis with redundant 1400W PSU's; I'm not so much worried about the PSU during boot but rather worried about the 1500VA [700W] APC UPS tripping! With only 12 HDD [chassis takes a total of 36] & none of the ZIL/L2ARC SSD or a HBA connected, this thing draws almost 1/2 the rated W.

Well, wrong info on IBM's website or could be gimped with firmware & I'd rather not have to spend even more on additional HBA's. Anyway I listed the number of drives wrong, I actually need at least 42 currently [36 HDD + 4 SDD + 2 boot HDD/SSD, not to mention future expansion with chassis daisy chaining & one of the reasons why I paid so much for a SM chassis with SAS 6.0 backplane].

As for the SMART & SGPIO/SES-2 [I2C], these are absolutely necessary. I have bought all the components I need & put them together almost 3 weeks ago. Haven't been able to stress test [run 14 rounds of disk wipe for 72 hours; 5-6 hours each pass, so 7 write + 7 read/verify] any of the hardware yet for lacking HBA & cables to drive the backplane. I need to have access to SMART data before, during & after the test, so that I can compare how each individual drives have fared. This way I can RMA & replace any drives that shows sign of immediate failures or degraded surface before I move onto testing the various Solaris distributions, RAID levels & finally moving all data.

I look at the situation this way, if I have to spend almost a week or two testing & then several more weeks moving my data from various places onto this, but only then a drive/2 to go belly up means degraded RAID & long rebuild time [best case scenario] or losing all my data [worst case scenario]. I'd rather take my time testing, setting things up properly & learning all the necessary skills to administer this thing while avoiding the situation described above.

Also being able to drive HDD LED's on the 36 drive backplane/chassis is quite important for ease of maintenance & saving time [not to mention pulling wrong drives out & causing more problems], doubly so when expanding capacity by daisy chaining more chassis.

odditory, thanks for taking the time to post a good reply.

I'd still like answers to questions #2 #3 & #4 if anyone has them. This will provide me with valuable info from experienced users & also cut short the testing time. In some cases significant time can be saved, as running into any problem I would have to diagnose not just the drives but backplane, cables, HBA, even the OS, drivers & settings.
 
Got everything setup now and running. Did a little CrystalDiskmark test and came back with the below:

writeback.jpg


The controller won't let me choose anything but 'write-through' for setting up my RAID6 array. I believe this is because I don't have the battery back-up unit.

After/if I purchase the battery unit and switch away from 'write-through' will I see an improvement in write speeds?

Was I missing something during the setup, can I choose a different write setting without the unit?

-- Update -- (image changed)

So I found that you can change the write caching policy, it just doesn't like the idea too much (warning that if you loose power you could loose data)

But you can see from the picture above, the speed difference is night and day. Note it also seems read speeds moves around 414/432/440mb/s but write is 670+ in all my testing.

Specs:

LSI 9260-4i (12.12.0-0048 firmware) + Intel RES2SV240 Expander
8 X 2TB Sammy 5900RPM

Full Specs here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1627297
 
Last edited:
I'm getting a X8SI6-F and a Norco 4224 for a ZFS box. I tried to order the Chenbro CK23601 but it's taking forever to ship, so I'm now looking at a 9201-16i instead. Would this be a better option anyway, since it will have 24 real ports instead of cramming everything through 8 ports via expander?
 
cynix said:
I'm getting a X8SI6-F and a Norco 4224 for a ZFS box. I tried to order the Chenbro CK23601 but it's taking forever to ship, so I'm now looking at a 9201-16i instead. Would this be a better option anyway, since it will have 24 real ports instead of cramming everything through 8 ports via expander?
Click to expand...

I would go with the 9201-16i and get the slightly lower model of the SM board. Probably works out to about the same amount of $.
 
Blackdragon said:
I would go with the 9201-16i and get the slightly lower model of the SM board. Probably works out to about the same amount of $.
Click to expand...
But if I get a motherboard without on-board SAS2008, I'd have to get another M1015 or something in order to get 24 ports, right?
 
cynix said:
But if I get a motherboard without on-board SAS2008, I'd have to get another M1015 or something in order to get 24 ports, right?
Click to expand...

Sorry, yes, your correct I forgot you need 24 port.

You could try M1015 + Intel RES2SV240. That would get you 24ports. The Intel expander also comes with most of the cables you'll probably need. I do believe 2 short and 4 long SFF-8087 cables.
 
Last edited:
Blackdragon said:
Sorry, yes, your correct I forgot you need 24 port.

You could try M1015 + Intel RES2SV240. That would get you 24ports. The Intel expander also comes with most of the cables you'll probably need. I do believe 2 short and 4 long SFF-8087 cables.
Click to expand...

Hmm that's definitely another option I should consider. However, would there be a performance penalty because all 24 drives are actually connected to 8 SAS ports through the expander?
 
cynix said:
Hmm that's definitely another option I should consider. However, would there be a performance penalty because all 24 drives are actually connected to 8 SAS ports through the expander?
Click to expand...

You can see my benchmarks above that's through an expander, so you're looking at the above or better I would say. I don't think the expander is going hurt speed too much.
 
Last edited:
To anyone, regarding the LSI FastPath option with some SSD's...

Is LSI stopping production on their FastPath device? Every website I look at has one from Intel and one from LSI. The LSI one is always backordered but the Intel one is usually in stock.

For example, currrently:
Intel part: AXXRPFKSSD
$173.87 @ provantage.com

LSI part: LSI00247
$136.54 @ provantage.com

Are they the same physical equipment with a different sticker?
 
vr. said:
To anyone, regarding the LSI FastPath option with some SSD's...

Is LSI stopping production on their FastPath device? Every website I look at has one from Intel and one from LSI. The LSI one is always backordered but the Intel one is usually in stock.

For example, currrently:
Intel part: AXXRPFKSSD
$173.87 @ provantage.com

LSI part: LSI00247
$136.54 @ provantage.com

Are they the same physical equipment with a different sticker?
Click to expand...

they are doing this because the hardware keys are not usuable on their newer stuff, like the 9265. they want you to buy a software license to lock you in to your controller.

you have to be very sure your card can take the key. newer cards like the 9265 cannot, but the 9260 can. the software key will work on any controller once you do the activation process. if you need to buy a software key, scsi4me will do it over email.
 
*SOLVED*

just don't ask..... I'm a n00b, that's all I'll say! :p

:D
 
Last edited:
I'm looking on LSI's support downloads section and can't find things for the LSI-2108 model. Where are you folks getting firmware and drivers from for your LSI cards?
 
well i ordered a norco 4224 and im looking for a good combination to connect the 24 drives via sas
 
thalantis said:
well i ordered a norco 4224 and im looking for a good combination to connect the 24 drives via sas
Click to expand...

Sure ... but considering the 9201-16i costs circa $400 [or more], surely there must be better [read:less expensive] ways of reaching a 24 drive capacity?

What I'd be doing is looking for a motherboard that already has a SAS2 controller intergrated into it [Hint: Some variant of the Supermicro X8SI6-F / X8DT6 - depending on your needs], and then you're all set.

8 x drives from the on-board SAS
16 x drives from the 9201-16i

Then you've still got 6 'regular' sata ports on the MB to use for OS disk(s), plus anything else you might be able to cram into the chassis somewhere.
 
well im gonna re-use my asus p5n-t deluxe, another option is the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 and a hp sas expander but then im in the wrong part of the forum ;)
 
Anyone: Is the MegaRAID Storage Manager all inclusive for current and past LSI cards? I've downloaded v2.35 which is said to work with PERC5 cards but if the latest MSM also works, I'd rather use the newer software.
Thanks!

EDIT: newest MSM version I've found is 6.71-01. Is there newer?
 
Last edited:
Hello forum members. ;)

I got problem with my LSI 9240-8i card, it's branded as Fujitsu Siemens but basicaly it's LSI 9240-8i without Raid5 just like IBM M1015.



Some specs http://allegro.pl/lsi-megaraid-0-1-sas-6gb-s-9240-8i-raid-0-1-10-i1978142645.html

I bought it few months ago, it won't work with my GA-MA790FXT-UD5P so after changing my rig to ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 i'm almost finished, but few problems appeared, normal version (without gen3 plx chip which could be a problem here) of this board was tested with LSI cards so I choose to buy a newer model.

Marvell rom boot option is disabled, but LSI makes win7 is booting very slowly and then after few seconds I got this massage "Controller encountered a fatal error and was reset"
msmerror.th.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

I could live with it as long as MegaRAID Storage Manager works ok, I can't open webios probably because I'm using Intel Raid - 4x500GB HDD (in future with some SSD SRT) on this board.

I don't have any free sata ports on intel/marvell controllers so I want to use LSI to connect a few HDDs with data on it. My main problem is that I don't know how to use jbod function. When I connect some disks to LSI, then I can make it to assign as a "Hot Spare Disks" which if I understand correctly are backup drives for a raid configuration, or I can make a single drive to be a member of virtual drive. Last option give me only Raid0 choice, kind of misleading but it's single drive in raid0 configuration. All would be ok with that, but making a such virtual drive destroys all data after initialisation process, what I try to avoid.

LSI card flashed with latest firmware from LSI site, newest drivers and MSM, tested with latest asrock bios
I would be very thankful for any help
 
two things

that error I usually get only during consistency checks on my 9265-8i. I had to rma it to fix those. turn off any running consistency checks to see if that fixes the issue for now.

also, for jbod, many lsi controllers force you to make a raid0 1 disk configuration. I haven't found a way around that for lsi 9265. not sure how much of that applies to your card as well.
 
Ok, I stopped consistency checks in MSM but same error still appears on windows startup, I suspect that it's related to interupts assignment, but basicly can't change anything, more important - is there a way to use single drive filled with data in jbod mode without losing it's data.
 
gjs278 said:
so I update my 9265 firmware

mistake.

first, I update the firmware. that goes smooth enough.

I reboot.

beep. beep. beep.

the alarm is on. why? NO IDEA. SHUTUP ALARM. I get into webbios, disable the alarm, and it goes me some BS about non-optimal PD I have no idea what it's going on about. it's still doing it, but I turned off the alarm so I can go to sleep.

my virtual disks are fine and I've rebooted several times now. beep. beep.

then I go into web bios to see what changed. I head over to my ssd array, and disk cache is disabled with no way of turning it back on... why? it's specifically grayed out in web bios and the megaraid storage manager in windows.

was ssd caching not working? did it not do anything? what the hell is this, why can't I turn it back on?

the driver for windows xp 64bit wouldn't install. I tried the xp64 and the windows 2k3 64bit driver, neither one would update the driver in windows.

this is my error as reported by megacli:



wtf do I do? I want to be able to turn back on my alarm for actual things.
Click to expand...

Did you get any resolution on this?

I am getting the same thing. I have a battery unit on the way, I am hoping that will resolve it.
 
jen4950 said:
Did you get any resolution on this?

I am getting the same thing. I have a battery unit on the way, I am hoping that will resolve it.
Click to expand...

nope. had to downgrade firmware. I rma'd the card over firmware issues due to the rep not actually caring enough to solve the problem and got back a card that would fail doing consistency checks. I had to rma that one because it actually had something wrong with it.

the one I got back from that is fine and I never plan on upgrading the firmware past february
 
gjs278 said:
nope. had to downgrade firmware. I rma'd the card over firmware issues due to the rep not actually caring enough to solve the problem and got back a card that would fail doing consistency checks. I had to rma that one because it actually had something wrong with it.

the one I got back from that is fine and I never plan on upgrading the firmware past february
Click to expand...

Did you ave a BBU9 installed?
 
Anyone know why I get ~200-225MB/s max read speed with HD Tune, running 9260-4i with Crucial M4 512 AND Crucial C300 128GB ?

Both register at SATA III but I was expecting a little better read speed than 200MB/s

Any recommended settings for Read / IO Policy?.


Currently set to read ahead, direct IO, write back.
 
gjs278 said:
nope. had to downgrade firmware. I rma'd the card over firmware issues due to the rep not actually caring enough to solve the problem and got back a card that would fail doing consistency checks. I had to rma that one because it actually had something wrong with it.

the one I got back from that is fine and I never plan on upgrading the firmware past february
Click to expand...

I ended up downgrading the firmware like you did and the error went away.
 
I turned on all alerts for a system with an LSI card and get these every hour on the hour:

MegaRAID said:
Controller ID: 0 Time established since power on: Time 2012-04-27,13:00:16 73553 Seconds Generated on:Fri Apr 27 13:00:16 2012


SYSTEM DETAILS---
IP Address: 192.168.1.151
OS Name: Windows 7 x64
OS Version: 6.01
Driver Name: megasas.sys
Driver Version: 4.5.1.64

IMAGE DETAILS---
BIOS Version: 2.120.223-1467
Firmware Package Version: 12.12.0-0085
Firmware Version: 3.24.00_4.12.05.00_0x05100000
Click to expand...

I've looked around in MSM and can't find a setting to adjust the time interval.

Is this an NTP-like notification? Is it adjustable?
 
Hi,

Does anyone have any experience with the 9260s (4i specifically) and running SLI. I'd like to get my RAID5 off the Intel on-board and onto a real controller, but my last venture (HP RR 3510 + 6970s in CF) turned out badly and didn't work at all.

Experience or thoughts would be great.

Edit.

Nevermind, will get a GTX690 and an LSI 9260 and it'll all work out :)

Edit 2.

If anyone was wondering the LSI 9620 4i works in an Asus Maximus IV as long as you have it in the most bottom red slot; anywhere else and it won't be detected.
 
Last edited:
Hi guys,

I'm considering an LSI 9285-8e with FastPath and CacheCade Pro 2.0. I was planning on using it with an external DAS box with a SAS expander.
I was wondering:

1. Does anyone have experience with this card + cachecade, and are there any issues I should be aware of at this time?
2. What would the LSI card + Cachecade/Fastpath run me?
 
I've sent a few emails to LSI in the past and never gotten a reply. How are you guys reaching out to LSI and getting your support questions answered?
 
I have reached out to LSI and they answered my questions. What did you send them?
 
gjs278 said:
I have reached out to LSI and they answered my questions. What did you send them?
Click to expand...

Questions about how to set their battery relearns to specific times of day instead of a broad range of hours?
 
sethk said:
Hi guys,

I'm considering an LSI 9285-8e with FastPath and CacheCade Pro 2.0. I was planning on using it with an external DAS box with a SAS expander.
I was wondering:

1. Does anyone have experience with this card + cachecade, and are there any issues I should be aware of at this time?
2. What would the LSI card + Cachecade/Fastpath run me?
Click to expand...

This is exactly what we are looking to do, what enclosure were you looking at?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top