Does the M1015 require being flashed to the iT firmware to work with unRAID/ESX?

[WeeboTech]

Just curious if I have to flash this card into IT mode or if I can use it with IR firmware and pass through to unRAID?

 

Will unRAID see drives as JBOD if configured that way?

Will unRAID see any RAID enabled drives?

 

Before I start flashing away the raid functionality.  Is there a reason to do that?

 

[jangjong]

I believe the reason is because M1015 is a software raid card and unraid doesn't have the correct driver for it when it's raided.

 

and i can't find where i read it, but i read somewhere that if it's in default mode, HDD won't be detected by OS's if HDD's are not in raid.

 

so if you dont make them in raid, hdd's wont be recognized by unraid.

if you make them in raid, the raid wont be recognized by unraid.

 

so IT firmware is necessary.

 

but, IR in other hand may be different.

in the article that you posted up about M1015, it talks about M1015 being able to be in three different mode: LSI9211-IT, LSI9211-IR, LSI9240 (Default) (http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/)

 

sounds like IR mode is IT mode + raid capability.

but again, it comes down to unraid's raid driver. 

 

maybe someone else can answer if RAID using IR mode is supported by unraid

[WeeboTech]

maybe someone else can answer if RAID using IR mode is supported by unraid

 

I was curious because the Areca cards can be seen in JBOD or RAID mode. It was cool having the RAID0(PARITY)/RAID1(CACHE) on the same pair of drives.

[johnodon]

Simple answer...yes (if you want to passthrough the entire controller).

[BobPhoenix]

Bare metal unRAID does not recognize a drive if you don't flash away M1015 bios.  I never tried flashing to IR mode so I can't say about that but until I flashed my M1015s to IT mode unRAID could not use drives connected to it.