Porterhouse Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 I'm looking for a new 16port controller and would like recommendations please .. I have 2 Pro servers with LSI 9650/24s and 3-4 5xbay Norco (SATA) bays per server. (Not fully populated yet but growing) One is running v6b12 and the other v5.0.5 I'm having SCSI controller issues with one server including spindown errors/problems but not sure if this is due to 6b12 because the v5 servers seems to spindown OK, and has the same card/firmware (supplied by LSI to support >2Tb disks) However the LSI 9650 is no longer supported and as I'm having lots of scsi errors (not just spindown but disk read errors, etc) with one of the cards which LSI are helping to diagnose, but generally giving me the standard patter ... 'no longer supported .. suggest replacing it'. My budget is non-existent (it being so close to the Christmas bills landing) but my data is my main concern. Can anyone recommend a 16port (16 internal ports that is) card, which supports spindown and is HALF LENGTH as per the LSI 9650/9260/9280/9201's as my server rack is short front to back. Height of card is not really an issue. I like the 9260/9280 design with cables exiting at top, but these cards are £700+ in UK, so I was thinking of going for an LSI 9201/16i which is a bit cheaper. I'm anxious to make the right choice not just on cost but because I'm seeing comments on the web/forums that LSI has removed support for advanced power, ie spindown ?. The LSI 9201 is listed here as 'good' > http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility#PCI_SATA_Controllers but does anyone know if it still supports spindown in current firmware ? ...and any other/better suggestions/recommendations most welcome Thanks Quote Link to comment
Porterhouse Posted February 7, 2015 Author Share Posted February 7, 2015 OK - LSI (Avago) have come back with some info that may be useful to others so, paraphrasing .. >>>opcode=0x85 ... is not an error. It means that the command is not supported, eg for Linux command 'hdparm' (spin down drives) LSI 3ware controllers .. do not support hdparm (?? - 9650/9750) LSI MegaRAID controllers do not support hdparm either. (?? - 9260/9280) LSI HBA's do support SPINDOWN because they support JBOD mode. (?? - 9200/9201/9207/9211/9212 & new 9300 series) 3ware 9650SE and 9750 controllers DO SUPPORT POWERSAVE/spin down mode BUT YOU HAVE TO USE 'tw_cli' to do it. Drives can be put in standby mode by setting the standbytimer (using tw_cli) To disable power save: /c0/u0 set PSstandbytimer=0 To enable power save: /c0/u0 set PSstandbytimer=5 (Timer can be set 5-999) To show the timer: /c0/u0 show powersavestandbytimer or /c0/u0 show PSstandbytimer To check for power save status: /c0/u0 show PSstatus or /c0/u0 show powersavestatus or /c0/u0 show psstatus If the drives of the unit have spun down and are in standby mode: /c0/u0 show powersavestatus /c0/u0 Power Save status = standby The latest tw_cli may not show the standby status but the older version of tw_cli does. Other info available from 'tw_cli' :- ......................................./tw_cli /c1 show all........................................ /c1 Driver Version = /c1 Model = /c1 Available Memory = /c1 Firmware Version = /c1 Bios Version = /c1 Boot Loader Version = /c1 Serial Number = ....................................../tw_cli /c1/p4 show all....................................... /c1/p4 Status = /c1/p4 Model = /c1/p4 Firmware Version = /c1/p4 Serial = /c1/p4 Capacity = /c1/p4 Reallocated Sectors = /c1/p4 Power On Hours = /c1/p4 Temperature = /c1/p4 Spindle Speed = /c1/p4 Link Speed Supported = ----------------------------------------------- Other useful snippets from LSI (Avago): Connector 0 (port-7) is at the bottom closest to the motherboard Sometimes, the cable are labelled as p0-7 and sometimes p1-8 You can't move an existing 3ware raid to a MegaRAID 9260-16i . MegaRAID controllers can't detect 3ware raid metadata. You have to start over from scratch (Only applies if you have configured a RAID setup. If you setup the disks as single disk they should detect OK) You can replace the 9650SE with a 9750-16i4e or 24i4e. The 9750 will detect and keep the existing raid arrays. (Only relevant if you have setup a raid array) ** 'tw_cli' is too large to attach to this post even zipped) ** Quote Link to comment
Porterhouse Posted February 22, 2015 Author Share Posted February 22, 2015 I posted this update on another thread under General Support also, in case it was related to a v6 bug but I think not, unless the volume of 'errors' cause the server to hang. However, here is my experience around LSI support and choice of RAID/HBA cards with high port-count, in case it is of help to anyone else:- My investigations with LSI(Avago.com) took many 'cycles' because there feedback is so cryptic that it requires more Q's to understand what they are telling you, and each cycle takes >2 days or 4-5 days if it overlaps a weekend, plus time to then investigate further (whilst also working away from home 4-5 days a week). Hence this investigation took me weeks. LSI support pointed to 'errors' from certain disks (captured from the 'lsigetlunix' command/dump) and lots of errors could also clearly be seen in the unRAID logs, but it turned out that these 'errors' filling up the logs were actually due to unsupported commands issued by the OS (eg hdparm) which is just a command which the particular version of LSI/3Ware/Megaraid/(Dell/HP rebranded) card, didn't recognise. I also got the expected 'unsupported ... suggest replacing' advice from LSI. So, given that the (15Tb of ripped media) data and effort required to create it was worth far more to me than the £1000 (it cost me for a second hand) 9650SE/24i RAID card, which was apparently causing the problem, I decided to bite the bullet and replace it with an LSI 9201/16i HBA costing around £340, and hey, no more errors, and it's reading the disks at SATA III-6Gb/s spec now. I was also extremely worried about changing 'controllers' (because as confirmed by LSI, some RAID cards do not recognise the metadata of other cards and that this is true even between LSI:3Ware and LSI:Megaraid) you risk the card wiping the disk config and forcing a reformat, but I needn't have worried. Note that my disks were setup in single disk mode on the 9650 RAID card, but I had no problem moving them to the 9201 HBA. Just follow the process (advised by TOM) of disabling parity first (Stop array, unassign parity disk, start array) then AND ONLY THEN (stop array, power off) move the disks to the new HBA (fire up, run 'new config', assign parity disk, restart array, wait ..long time.. until parity is rebuilt), job done. The only weird thing about the LSI SAS 9201/16i HBA is that it seems to pick up the disks in a random order, not consistent with the SAS/SATA port numbers etc, but hey, it's no biggy I suppose. Note to anyone interested enough to want to read the outcome of this, LSI are in the process of launching a 9300 series HBA and this will apparently be faster still than the 9201 at 12Gb/s I believe. Mark as RESOLVED. Quote Link to comment
Nebur692 Posted January 14, 2018 Share Posted January 14, 2018 On 07/02/2015 at 5:42 PM, Porterhouse said: To disable power save: /c0/u0 set PSstandbytimer=0 To enable power save: /c0/u0 set PSstandbytimer=5 (Timer can be set 5-999) To show the timer: /c0/u0 show powersavestandbytimer or /c0/u0 show PSstandbytimer To check for power save status: /c0/u0 show PSstatus or /c0/u0 show powersavestatus or /c0/u0 show psstatus If the drives of the unit have spun down and are in standby mode: /c0/u0 show powersavestatus /c0/u0 Power Save status = standby The latest tw_cli may not show the standby status but the older version of tw_cli does. I have: /c1 Driver Version = 2.26.02.014 /c1 Model = 9650SE-24M8 /c1 Available Memory = 448MB /c1 Firmware Version = FE9X 4.10.00.027 /c1 Bios Version = BE9X 4.08.00.004 /c1 Boot Loader Version = BL9X 3.08.00.001 I can not set the shutdown time: root@nas:~# tw_cli /c1/u0 set PSstandbytimer=0 Error: (CLI:080) Invalid unit set command. Quote Link to comment
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