Issues with RAID/SAS Cards for a Cisco UCSC-C240-M4

[Nealon]

Hello, I've been running UNRAID on a pretty standard 8 bay mini itx case for a few years now, and I've started to outgrow it.

 

So, to dip my toes into the proper server waters, I picked up one of these (not that specific listing, I got a slightly different config on ebay for $200, missing CPU, RAM, Drives, and a RAID/SAS card.

 

I'm fairly certain I've got the CPU, RAM, and HDD's (though the drive sleds it came with don't support standard HDDs... so I bought some new ones that are gonna take a month to ship... I just have a drive kind of, in there for now.) covered at this point (planning on using a standard NCMe PCIe adapter for cache, just bought that today... hopefully that'll work), but I'm currently a little stumped on the RAID/SAS card.

 

Before, I really understood everything, I bought this RAID Card because that was the first thing that came up when I was looking for something that matched the plug type at least.  However, after asking around while waiting for all of that to come in the mail, I realized what I really wanted (given I'm using UNRAID, and don't want a RAID controller getting in the way, was a SAS card.  So I bought this one.

 

Well I've got everything here with me now, and if I have the SAS card in the server, I get stuck on "Initializing.../" spinning forever, until it eventually times out with this error.

 

The RAID card produces no such errors, though I didn't see my drive being passed through to UNRAID at least, I'm going to try to tinker with this more later tonight to see if I can possibly configure it to not actually do anything with RAID and just pass the drives through... Let me know if anyone has suggestions there.

 

As for the error though, I've gathered that I need to update the card somehow/flash it with new firmware/BIOS?  The thing is, I have absolutely no idea how to do that.

 

I found this guide on updating the firmware on the server, which leads me to a Server Firmware ISO (not sure if I need the configuration tool as well?  Is that just an update to the config tool I saw listed on the BIOS splash screen?), but again, that's for the server itself, not the card, where I believe the issue is.

 

In summary:

 

I'm also open to returning both of these cards and buying a different one if I can be confident that one will work.  Obviously it would be easier if I can find the necessary software/instructions to update the SAS card firmware OR configure the RAID card into some sort of pass-through mode though.

 

Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated!  Even if the advice is to return the hardware while I still can because it's gonna be more trouble than it's worth.  Though if I get this working, I'll have 24 cores at 2.3 ghz base (3.0 boost), and 32gb of RAM, and 12 drive slots for under $1000, so I'd REALLY like to get this working if possible...  Just need some help finding the right parts/software.  Let me know if I need to provide more details/images of anything, and thank you in advance!

 

 

[Nealon]

Quick update...

 

By setting the RAID card to enable JBOD, I was able to get it to pass through all the drives without RAIDing them.  so that's great, but now, with 3 old iron wolf drives lying around, I'm getting whole bunch of udma crc errors... which from I'm reading is likely a cable issue?  Well I basically have just the backplane with the sff 8643 cables coming out to the RAID card, which connects through what I assume is just a PCIe slot.  There's some other connectors that look similar to 10 pin mobo power supply connectors, but I can't see where those go, I'd assume the bottom side of the mobo though.

 

Any suggestions are still much appreciated.  I've gotten small nudges in the right direction from a few people already and greatly appreciate the input, but I keep bumping into annoying walls.  Hopefully I can keep getting past them!