Supermicro board bios settings - does not detect PCIe card

[Stokkes]

Hey all,

 

Rebuilding my unRAID server and purchased a Supermicro X9SCM-IIF which is a really nice board. I had two of these cards on my Asus P5K for years: http://www.siig.com/it-products/controllers-storage/serialata/pcie/sata-ii-pcie-raid.html that worked just fine, but for the life of me I can't get them to work on the Supermicro board.

 

Anyone have any ideas? I've tried a few things:

 

- Different slots (the x4 vs the x8 slots) - the cards are x1

- tried changing thebios settings to set it to Gen1 PCI-e

- Tried bios settings to enable detection of non-compliant cards

- Disabled VT-d

 

these cards just do not get recognized and I have no idea why. Any ideas for the gurus out there?

 

Thanks!

 

[BobPhoenix]

I had a similar problem with a PCIe tuner card on a X9SCM-F (not the X9SCM-IIF).  Turned out it was the Ivy Bridge compatible bios.  Earlier versions of the bios that were Sandy Bridge compatible only worked.  So if you have a Sandy Bridge CPU and a bios exists that is Sandy Bridge only you could try that.  However be careful I tried to down grade my bios on my X9SCM-F and bricked the board.  If you have an Ivy Bridge CPU or there is no earlier bios that works then you can try reporting it to SuperMicro.  IBM (I have DH77EB MB with Ivy Bridge i7-3770S CPU), Tyan and SuperMicro all have the same problem for me with Ivy Bridge.  IBM upgraded their bios on a different H77 version of my MB and fixed the tuner problem so if you can get SuperMicro to work on it maybe they can come up with a solution.

[Stokkes]

Hmm, as I feared.

 

It's a shiny new Ivy Bridge E3-1230 v2. I haven't upgraded the bios to 2.00a from 2.00, not sure if that'll do it but I'll try. I'll contact SM support tomorrow and cross my fingers. Otherwise I may need to finally buy an M1015.

 

 

[kegler]

Hmm, as I feared.

 

It's a shiny new Ivy Bridge E3-1230 v2. I haven't upgraded the bios to 2.00a from 2.00, not sure if that'll do it but I'll try. I'll contact SM support tomorrow and cross my fingers. Otherwise I may need to finally buy an M1015.

 

I have that same combination (MB & CPU) in a very recent new ESXi/unRAID build.  I am using an M1015 which is passed through to my unRAID VM.  The initial install used 5.0-rc8a.  Today I just updated to 5.0-rc10.  So far everything looks good, but I have some more testing to do once the parity check finishes.  I am most concerned about having that slow write/fast read problem that many X9SCM-F users are  reporting.  I have yet to hear of an X9SCM-iiF build with this problem.

 

The X9SCM-iiF with an Ivy Bridge processor supports PCIE 3.0 where the older Sandy Bridge processor did not.  This is probably at the root of your problem.  Some PCIE 2.0 boards just will work with it as BobPhoenix pointed out above.  SM should be able to give you a little more insight when you talk to them.  The M1015 board works fine but you will need to update the MB BIOS to 2.0A before you can update the firmware on the M1015 to IT mode. 

 

Also, it has been reported that no one has been able to get 3 M1015's working on this MB at the same time.  They have been able to get that combination to work on an X9SCM-F with a Sandy Bridge processor though.  I have a spare M1015 available that I experimented with when I was building this system.  I did note some unusual behavior under ESXi when adding the second M1015.  My unRAID VM got switched over to the newly added M1015.  Moving the second board to another open slot changed the ESXi configuration yet again.  This should not be normal behavior.  So I suspect there are underlying problems with this MB/CPU/BIOS combination.  I do expect these problems will be ironed out eventually but in the meanwhile they can be a PITA to deal with.

 

[jdc]

I have that same combination (MB & CPU) in a very recent new ESXi/unRAID build.  I am using an M1015 which is passed through to my unRAID VM.  The initial install used 5.0-rc8a.  Today I just updated to 5.0-rc10.  So far everything looks good, but I have some more testing to do once the parity check finishes. 

 

I have the same setup (X9SCM-IIF and 1240 v2), but I'm having trouble with the step of passing through the m1015 to Intel RES2SV240.  I can see all the drives but when I go to Advanced Settings, it states the Host does not support passthrough configuration.  Any chance you can give me a pointer on your setup?

[prostuff1]

I recently built three servers for customers using that exact combo.  I did not have any trouble and all I really had to do was turn on VT-d in the BIOS, make sure Intel Virtualization was on, then do a full shutdown and startup.

[Ford Prefect]

...someone else has actually been successful with 3x M1015 on a X9SCM-iiF, see: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=22327.msg235970#msg235970

[jdc]

I recently built three servers for customers using that exact combo.  I did not have any trouble and all I really had to do was turn on VT-d in the BIOS, make sure Intel Virtualization was on, then do a full shutdown and startup.

 

I'll give it a try changing the vt-d setting again. What version of esxi did you use? I originally tried 5u2 and the 5.1u1.

[prostuff1]

I recently built three servers for customers using that exact combo.  I did not have any trouble and all I really had to do was turn on VT-d in the BIOS, make sure Intel Virtualization was on, then do a full shutdown and startup.

 

I'll give it a try changing the vt-d setting again. What version of esxi did you use? I originally tried 5u2 and the 5.1u1.

I set all three servers up using ESXi 5.1

[jdc]

Thanks for your help.  I got it all working now.  My problem was I was using unRAID 4.7, so I upgraded to the latest beta and was able to passthrough the m1015. 

[jdc]

 

I set all three servers up using ESXi 5.1

 

Just curious, did you setup the dual NIC as teaming or dedicate one to unRAID?  for my purposes, I don't expect to copy a lot of data to unRAID that isn't on another VM.  Should I do NIC teaming and what's your take on that?  If the preference is to passthrough a NIC to unRAID, then do I disable the vmnic?  Thanks.