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

FYI, it looks like LSI has started to ship the 2308. It is currently used in the new 9205-8e card. Looks like it allows a performance increase from ~300k IOPS to ~500k IOPS according to the LSI website.
 
I ordered an LSI SAS3081E-R 2 days ago from dealextreme, so I'm joining this club. This is for my home media server, it'll take a long time to get here.
 
I just got a lsi 9211-8i card. Connected to hp sas expander. Running win 7 x64. All my drives show up properly and after windows auto installed drivers for the hba. I just want it in jbod mode which it appears to be by default. Now I'm looking to see if I should be upgrading the card bios and firmware. Trying to figure out settings. Apparently this is not so simple with lsi as with areca.

1. When at startup there is an option to press ctrl + c to enter the card bios. I did this and it said it was invoking but went straight to windows. I can't seem to even get into the card bios so what is the deal?
2. Is someone willing to post up instructions as to how to analyze your current bios/firmware, provide download links, and most importantly how to update, etc. Hopefully we could have a more detailed first post people can reference.
3. What is the deal with this IT firmware I'm seeing referred to? What is on the card stock and what does this IT firmware change?
4. Will drives go to sleep with this card and what do i set for this (anything besides win pwr mgmt)?

here is the link to the card and downloads
http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/internal/sas9211-8i/index.html

I'm reading the documentation now but it isn't too friendly and hoped someone could give me a jump start now.
 
these instructions will work for you even though patrick references doing it on a mobo with integrated SAS2008. same diff for what you are trying to accomplish. you can flash it inside of windows and will see the cmdline usage you need.
http://www.servethehome.com/howto-flash-supermicro-x8si6f-lsi-sas-2008-controller-lsi-firmware/

IT is a lighter firmware that has the raid0/1 ability of the default IR firmware stripped out. it makes it more of a true JBOD card where you get 8 SAS ports and configurable spinup delay and that's it. personally i'm not convinced that IT firmware is so superior to IR firmware for JBOD and soft raid applications like ZFS, even though lots of people around here have decided that IT firmware must be superior. while some would argue that you can't go wrong with IT firmware, i'd counter that since you can't roll back to IR firmware (in my testing anyway), it needs more testing to determine if theres really anything gained by forever losing the ability to configure basic raids on the card.

no, spindown of JBOD disks on anything but their upper tier SAS2108 based cards currently isn't supported, and something I've been harping on LSI about. so far they're sticking to their marketing guidance that only "upper tier" cards like the 926x and 928x support spindown of JBOD disks. total b.s. and when i get some more time i'm going to start a multi-blog campaign against them not supporting green practices (or some such to get fire under the ass of the right VP).
 
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odditory - thanks as always

Between the documentation and the link above I was able to update the windows driver, install the firmware update, and install the bios update.

For the benefit of others (win 7 x64 example)...
  1. Windows Driver
    • Device Manager - LSI Storage Controller - Update Driver - Have Disk
    • LSImpt_SAS2_Windows7_P8\lsi_sas2_win7_x64_rel (default folder name from lsi download)
  2. Prep for firmware/bios
    • Download firmware and bios (9211_8i_Package_for_P8_Firmware_BIOS_on_MSDOS_and_Windows)
    • Make a separate folder somewhere (desktop)
    • Add 2118ir.bin
      • This is the default IR type - retaining raid functionality
      • Alternately use the 2118it.bin for the IT type. Warning - you may not be able to revert back to default IR.
    • Add mptsas2.rom
    • Add sas2flash.exe
    • Open cmd shell (Start - type 'cmd' and then enter)
    • Browse to your created folder above
  3. Firmware Update Command
    • sas2flash -f 2118ir.bin
  4. Bios Update Command
    • sas2flash -b mptsas2.rom

As a final interesting note, my asrock x58 extreme mobo or other bios was interfering with me getting to the lsi bios. This was really ticking my off. I would hit Ctrl + C when prompted and then get the message that it was "invoking SAS configuration utility" followed by confirmation "configuration utility will load following initialization" followed by "mpt2 boot rom successfully installed" and then windows would start. I ended up finding that I needed to hit F11 on my startup which is "Boot Menu" on my mobo and then once it hit the lsi bios and I hit Ctrl + C it would give me a prompt to enter "IDE: LSI MPI BOOT SUPPORT". If I only hit F11 I of course only get the option of booting into the drives on the mobo and hba and not into the lsi bios itself. So this was not expected behavior as I have not had to do that short of thing before.

So far this seems to be playing very nicely with my system. Works with my mobo, hp sas expander, all my drives are up (seagate, samsung, and wd) ,boot time is fast (around 10-15 seconds to init the lsi card). Flexraid serves my purposes so I'll probably sell my areca 1880i. Especially since that 1880i wouldn't work nicely with my hp sas expander. I just couldn't get more than 8 drives to consistently boot up with my 1880i and sas expander. Only once the firmware timed out and it restarted would the drives possibly all come online. I really wonder what it was. HP sas expander firmware, areca firmware, my mobo firmware??? Now I'm somewhat tempted to get another motherboard just to test it. Such a shame since the areca interface is way better than lsi and the power options were a huge benefit.

odditory said:
i'm going to start a multi-blog campaign against them not supporting green practices (or some such to get fire under the ass of the right VP).
Click to expand...
Lead the charge on that odditory!
 
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I also had all sorts of problems with the LSI BIOS. On an MSI board it was not possible to enter the LSI BIOS unless I got into the boot menu. Using two 9211-8i simultaneously on an Supermicro board it was not possible to enter the LSI BIOS at all, it would hang indefinitely after pressing Ctrl-C. I always had to remove one controller to get into the card's BIOS. However, this problem was recently fixed with an LSI BIOS update.
 
Apparently I spoke too soon about everything working ok. When I try to copy over large files everything appears to work well at first for a few seconds. Transfer speeds look good right around 100MB/s+. However, after maybe 10 seconds the speeds drop a lot and keep dropping. In the event viewer I see the following error. I have the latest windows driver installed. Any ideas?

LSI_SAS2%20Driver%20Controller%20Error.jpg


LSI%20Device%20Manager%20Driver.jpg


LSI%20lsi_sas2.sys%20properties.jpg


This is super frustrating. I have 2 hp sas expanders, an areca 1880i, and this lsi 9211-8i and I can't seem to get either setup working.
 
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which drive(s) is this happening with, how is the drive connected (HP Expander or direct to M1015), etc.

Is this issue consistent regardless of which drive you're copying to?
 
Yes it happens regardless of the drive I am copying to.

I have tried with drives connected direct and with drives connected to the hp sas expander. This problem only occurs with the hp sas expander. It happens every time I use with sas expander with any drive but I haven't been able to reproduce it with even 8 drives connected to the lsi. I have tried unplugging all but one set of drives on the expander using just a single sff-8087 to sata break out cable. So even with a single set of 4 drives connected to the hp sas expander I see this problem if I try to transfer from one drive to another. I even switched the set of 4 drives I was using so it was a new set of drives, new cable, and in a new port on the expander and the same thing happens. I also switched out the hp sas expander to the other I have and they both work the same way.
 
If you don't have any bright ideas on what may be wrong I'm just thinking of what my options would be at this point. Buy another lsi card and just use 2 of those direct. Or sell all this crap and buy a areca ARC-1880ix-12 or 16. It seems these cards work direct just fine for me but not with an hp sas expander. These are turning into some mighty expensive irritations. Too bad I don't have enough money left to buy a gun and shoot myself with :)
 
and you've tried a different motherboard? longshot but i've had experiences with what seemed like flaky PCIe cards turned out to be the motherboard.

i guess your options are returning anything that's still within a 30-day return window, and maybe trying the Intel RES2SV240 expander since its an LSISAS2x24 under the hood (the same generation LSI SAS2 expander found on the Areca 1880ix cards). The price has come down on them recently, so even though its only a net 20 ports once connected to a controller, with an areca 1880i you'd have a total of 24 ports. http://www.provantage.com/intel-res2sv240~7ITSP0V8.htm

or if you want to forfeit spindown (for now anyway) then yes, 2-3 HBA's and forget the expander.
 
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Only thing I haven't yet tried is a new motherboard. And if I buy a new motherboard then I start wondering what to buy. I don't really want to invest in another 1366. Should I just get a new 1155 socket and new cpu... Most places don't take stuff back after you opened it even if just to test it.

Is there any advantage to me using the intel expander you mentioned along with the 1880i over just getting an 1880ix-12 or 16 (besides the extra ports)? Do the areca raid controllers with the integrated expanders still work with the additional intel expander (since same lsi chip)?

The one advantage of a single card to handle this for me now is that I gain a pci-e slot back which could be useful in the future.
 
I've got an LSI 8308ELP card and I just picked up 8 Hitachi 1tb drives (Deskstar 7K1000.C). I set them all up in a RAID 5 using the auto-configure method. Prior to this I had 6 Seagate 7200.10 drives set up in a RAID 5. On those drives, I was getting a throughput peaking around 200mb/s and averaging 154mb/s. With these new drives and array I'm pulling an average of 132mb/s and bursts at 180mb/s max according to HD Tune Pro... I thought adding additional drives + the fact that they are higher-density drives would mean that I'd get a performance boost not a drop. I don't have a battery backup for this unit (it's plugged into a UPS though) but I didn't have one before either. Does anyone have any suggestions of what I should look into?

Other considerations: running Server 2003 R2 SP2. Motherboard: Asus P5N32-E SLI Turbo RAM: 2gb. The OS is on a single 80gb drive separate from the array. I tried running the same array on an Asus P5Q Pro board to see if it was just that but it ran even slower on that board! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

- Update: it just finished the background initialization and it's still super slow. Ideas of what to try next???
 
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I have a Supermicro X8DTU-6TF+ system with LSI 2108 integrated controller. The "WebBIOS" is insanely hard to navigate over the Java iKVM which is part of the Supermicro mainboard. Is there any LSI tricks to a more convenient way to attach direct to the WebBIOS and configure an array?
 
^ Thanks, Computurd - great find. So, the long anticipated 2208 is nigh...

More details on the LSI site:

LSI 2nd Gen SAS-2 RAID controllers

250,000 IOPS
450,000 IOPS with FastPath (still optional)
No improvements yet to CacheCade (i.e. still up to 512GB of SSD read cache)
New BBU that copes better with high ambient temps (didn't know this was a problem - but understandable in high density environments)
1GB of DDR3 cache (so bigger as well as faster!)

so far announced:

9265-8i - 8 internal ports - Spec (PDF)
9285-8e - 8 external ports - Spec (PDF)
 
So i;m looking at getting an X8SI6, which included what is basically a 9211-8i

My question is.. will i get drive drop outs due to tler thru this controller if i'm running drives without tler enabled?

I have a bunch of wd ears on which i cant enable tler, and im wondering if i will be asking for trouble running these in whs.

thanks!
 
It depends on if you run the controller in IT (Initiator-Target) mode, where it acts just as a "dumb" HBA which presents all disks directly to your OS or in IR (Integrated-Raid) mode, where the controllers decides what to do with the disks.

If you are not going to use the RAID functions of the controller (it only supports 1, 0 and 10) just flash it to IT mode and it will never drop any drive by itself.
 
I just got a couple of the M1015 HBA's, but they came with LP mounting brackets. Does anyone know a cheap source for a standard height mounting bracket that fits on this card?

Thx
mike
 
omniscence said:
It depends on if you run the controller in IT (Initiator-Target) mode, where it acts just as a "dumb" HBA which presents all disks directly to your OS or in IR (Integrated-Raid) mode, where the controllers decides what to do with the disks.

If you are not going to use the RAID functions of the controller (it only supports 1, 0 and 10) just flash it to IT mode and it will never drop any drive by itself.
Click to expand...

Are you sure this is also valid for the LSI SAS 9211-8i controller?

I cannot find different IT or IR firmwares on their website: http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/pro...pters/sas_hbas/internal/sas9211-8i/index.html

BTW: Does anybody know how to setup the staggered spinup delay in this controller? I don't find any option in the bios :-(
 
kirodar said:
Are you sure this is also valid for the LSI SAS 9211-8i controller?

I cannot find different IT or IR firmwares on their website: http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/pro...pters/sas_hbas/internal/sas9211-8i/index.html

BTW: Does anybody know how to setup the staggered spinup delay in this controller? I don't find any option in the bios :-(
Click to expand...

Okay, I just found out the IT and IR firmwares are only present in the download "Package for Firmware and BIOS Upgrade on MSDOS and Windows".

odditory said:
IT is a lighter firmware that has the raid0/1 ability of the default IR firmware stripped out. it makes it more of a true JBOD card where you get 8 SAS ports and configurable spinup delay and that's it.
Click to expand...

Does that mean the IT firmware of the LSI SAS 9211-8i provides the ability to setup the staggered spin up delay?
 
My M1015 is up and working on an AMD Zacate Board (Asrock E350-M1). Shocked that its working as the board only offers 4x PCIe 2.0 electrical on the x16 phycial slot. I'll be running 8 disks (plus 2 on onboard) for a 10 disk Samsung HD204UI ZFS Z2 array to start. Supposedly this will support 32 disks w/ port multipliers, but I don't have the gear to test with. Right now I'm getting ~130MB/s read per disk running surface scans on them all at the same time. Still trying to get FreeNas 8 to work, but from my understanding I'll have to use 7.2? with updated nic and onboard sata drivers. Performance isn't a huge deal as it is mainly going to be a Media server / Time machine storage box.

I'll be honest in that this is my first time trying to set something like this up so if it sounds like I'm doing something horribly wrong let me know :)
 
Computurd said:
there is a major issue of the firmware and evga motherboards not working together, a real bummer to be honest. the new firmwares will not work and evga/lsi both point the finger at each other. several posts, at several sites, document it.

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?&m=486164&mpage=1

there are a bunch over at XS and other places too if you google...
Click to expand...

sweloop64 said:
EVGA 680-sli had major issues with Areca cards if I remember correct, was not fixed by P33(last bios) and the mobo is EOL since long... The thread was very old and now seems to have gone MIA, can't find it...

What if you try and disable as many(try all if you can) onboard stuff as possible?
Try a PCI-gfx as well, just for the sake of testing...
Click to expand...

This is due to changes made in the last couple BIOS revisions of the 680i SLI BIOS. Specifically changes were made to enhance system stability and increase overclocking capabilities. I had this with my MegaRAID 8308ELP. I believe BIOS P27 or P28 was the last BIOS which allowed for compatibility with many of the higher end RAID cards. In fact, I still have this BIOS file / version if you need it.
 
now on the 9265, which works beautifully with the classified, and i didnt change the bios so its good :)
 
Does the LSI 9260-4i work with the Intel RES2SV240 expander??

I had an Areca 1880i with the Intel Expander with Hitachi 5k3000 drives and I was having problems with the Areca Blue Screening XP x64 occasionally because it would send Multiple IRP Complete Requests.

I returned the Areca card and am looking for a different Raid Card that works with my current hardware.

Thanks in advance.
 
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Is it possible to run a LSI 9211-8i in a x4 pci-e port? Its physicaly a x16 but i just found out that its wired as a x4.

My motherboard (Asus E35M1-I) doesn't find it at all, while it works fine if i plug it into a x8 port on a diffrent MB.

Thanks for any feedback on this issue.
 
Eiktyrner said:
Is it possible to run a LSI 9211-8i in a x4 pci-e port? Its physicaly a x16 but i just found out that its wired as a x4.

My motherboard (Asus E35M1-I) doesn't find it at all, while it works fine if i plug it into a x8 port on a diffrent MB.

Thanks for any feedback on this issue.
Click to expand...

It should be possible to install the x8 controller in the x16 slot and the negotiated PCIe link between motherboard chipset and controller will be x4 if that is the maximum supported by the slot.

If it's not working, you may want to read this thread and see if it rings any bells... maybe you are having the same problem with the reset pin?
 
Having trouble with my SAS 8308ELP.

I have a RAID5 array that has been functioning flawlessly for 3 years. The system disk ( C: ) is also on the controller card (no array), and works just fine. But now when the computer boots, the array can't be found ("LOADING FOREIGN CONFIGURATION"), and a LOUD alarm beep keeps going off constantly. So, I've been afraid to do anything in Windows, even though it will boot to windows.

I'm also having trouble loading the controller BIOS; it crashes every time when it goes to load it.

I called LSI, and they told me to go ahead and run the Windows-level software. But I can't download it from the site? I registered, but still don't have access to downloads, or documentation.

Advice, please?
 
Hey all.

I've been using a 3ware 9650SE-8LP for a few years and am now ready to grow and centralize my storage into an external chassis (DAS). That means I need to go SAS this time around and the 9280-8e was my first thought. I'm also planning on using the new Chenbro CK23601 expander paired with a Norco 4224. Now to the questions:

1. What are your suggestions for good HDDs that are compatible with the 926x/928x? This is for storage/backup only so I guess I could run 5400 RPM drives. I'm especially concerned with the whole TLER thing I've been reading about. It seems to affect Western Digital HDDs more than other now that the recent consumer WD HDDs have TLER disabled. Am I reading this all right? I've had good luck with 8 7200RPM 750GB Seagate drives on that 9650-8LP BTW.

2. Do I really need the 9280-8e? Could I get away with the 9260-8i and 1 or 2 8087-to-8088 adapters? I like the flexibility of having internal ports and converting 1 or more of those to external ones using adapters if I need to. Do I lose anything by doing that?

3. Kind of a side question: is the Norco 4224 SAS backplane capable of indicating error and ID information? I like the fact that I can tell my 3ware to ID drive 5 and it will blink the activity LED for that drive on my SuperMicro backplane.

Sorry for the lengthy post. Just trying to get my initial bearings.

Thanks!
 
Is there any way to spin down hard drives when idle in Windows while using LSI 1068e or SAS2008 based cards?
 
Is it possible to configure a staggered spinup on the IBM M1015 flashed w/ LSI 9240-8i firmware? I see an option for "spinup delay" in the web utility but changing the value seems to have no effect :confused:
 
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:

T26: EVT#34933-T26: 406=Reminder: Potential non-optimal configuration due to drive PD 08(e0xfc/s0) commissioned as emergency spare
T26: EVT#34934-T26: 406=Reminder: Potential non-optimal configuration due to drive PD 0b(e0xfc/s3) commissioned as emergency spare
T26: EVT#34935-T26: 406=Reminder: Potential non-optimal configuration due to drive PD 0c(e0xfc/s2) commissioned as emergency spare
T26: EVT#34936-T26: 406=Reminder: Potential non-optimal configuration due to drive PD 0d(e0xfc/s1) commissioned as emergency spare
T26: EVT#34937-T26: 406=Reminder: Potential non-optimal configuration due to drive PD 0e(e0xfc/s4) commissioned as emergency spare
T26: EVT#34938-T26: 406=Reminder: Potential non-optimal configuration due to drive PD 0f(e0xfc/s5) commissioned as emergency spare
Click to expand...

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