$80 - Intel RS2WC080 RAID Controller SAS/SATA MD2 6GB/s PCIe 2.0x8 New Retail Bo


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Going to end up purchasing these since they look similar to the Monoprice cables but at half the price.  8)http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00S7KTVN2?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_3&smid=A3CMOOTCHB9X54

 

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R1.TR9.TRC2.A0.H0.Xsff8087.TRS0&_nkw=sff-8087&_sacat=0

 

ebay has same cables for a few bucks cheaper too.

i picked up 2 a couple of months ago

 

 

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Agreed got mine early this morning, but was too busy to ope until now.

 

 

It does indeed come with Forward Breakout Cables in the box (x2)

 

Great buy!  I'll flash mine tonight.

 

FYI, I had trouble flashing mine using an MS DOS and FreeDOS USB sticks (problem with the sas2flsh.exe).  I had to hunt down the sas2flsh.efi uefi tool to do the actual LSI fw flash.  Let me know if you run into the same and I'll provide the URL to the LSI download containing the sas2flsh.efi package.

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Agreed got mine early this morning, but was too busy to ope until now.

 

 

It does indeed come with Forward Breakout Cables in the box (x2)

 

Great buy!  I'll flash mine tonight.

 

FYI, I had trouble flashing mine using an MS DOS and FreeDOS USB sticks (problem with the sas2flsh.exe).  I had to hunt down the sas2flsh.efi uefi tool to do the actual LSI fw flash.  Let me know if you run into the same and I'll provide the URL to the LSI download containing the sas2flsh.efi package.

 

Thanks, that would be most helpful, I am having trouble trying to flash just as you describe.

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Go to:

http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9211-8i#downloads

 

And download Installer_P20_for_UEFI

 

...extract that and copy the sas2flsh.efi to your USB key, then when you get to step 5 in the steps from the Instructions in https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.0, boot into the UEFI shell, mount the USB, and run the sas2flsh.efi (with the command line properties from the 5IT.bat and 6.bat).

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Go to:

http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9211-8i#downloads

 

And download Installer_P20_for_UEFI

 

...extract that and copy the sas2flsh.efi to your USB key, then when you get to step 5 in the steps from the Instructions in https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.0, boot into the UEFI shell, mount the USB, and run the sas2flsh.efi (with the command line properties from the 5IT.bat and 6.bat).

 

Thanks!

 

I have to finish up a project for a client, but I'll give this a go tomorrow evening.

 

I guess my next question is, will it be possible to flash back the original Firmware if say I want to move these cards one day to another server?  I'm sure you can download the original intel FW from their site correct?

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I guess my next question is, will it be possible to flash back the original Firmware if say I want to move these cards one day to another server?  I'm sure you can download the original intel FW from their site correct?

 

Unfortunately I dunno.  Yesterday was my first time flashing one of these LSI controllers.  I would certainly suspect that it's feasible. 

 

Instead of restoring the Intel FW, you could consider flashing the LSI IR FW if you needed the RAID capabilities when the card is moved to another server...

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...so, here's my cheatsheet for flashing these:

 

Read the big thread "LSI Controller FW updates IR/IT modes", specifically the stuff in the 4th post about LSI MegaRAID with SAS2008 chipsets:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.0

 

Download either the LSI MegaRAID to SAS2008(P10).zip or the P11.rar, then read the __READMEFIRST.txt.  He supplies a series of .bat files (1.bat, 2.bat, 3.bat, etc) to make things easy, however below are the commands that actually get run.

 

Need to download the "Installer_P20_for_UEFI" and "9211_8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows":

http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/tab/tab4#tab-archive-drivers3-abc

 

-- Boot using MSDOS or FreeDOS USB as I haven't yet found a UEFI tool to replace the MegaCLI.exe or MegaRec.exe:

1.bat:

MegaCli.exe -AdpAllInfo -aAll -ApplogFile AdaptersInfo1.txt

 

2.bat:

MegaRec.exe -readsbr 0 Mega.sbr

 

3.bat (Edit: I had to reboot here before the cleanflash would succeed.  after rebooting it worked):

MegaRec -writesbr 0 empty.bin

MegaRec -cleanflash 0

 

--REBOOT--

 

-- Boot into UEFI shell (only important if you have a UEFI bios - if you do, then you need to use the UEFI sas2flash.efi tool from the Installer_P20_for_UEFI package, as the DOS sas2flash.exe will error when run on a system with a UEFI bios.  If you don't have UEFI, then use the original 5.bat and 6.bat files), mount the USB stick, navigate into directory containing the sas2flash.efi and the FW images

 

5IT.bat:

sas2flash.efi -l Flashlog.txt -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom

 

6.bat:

sas2flash.efi -o -sasadd 500605bxxxxxxxxx

 

 

 

-- To upgrade to a newer version of the 2118 FW or change between the IT and IR, you can use the following two commands to clear the FW, and immediately flash to the new or alternate version:

 

#clear; DO NOT REBOOT, but reflash immediately after

sas2flash.efi -o -c 0 -e 6

 

#flash with firmware and bios (the -b mptsas2.rom is optional if you want the BIOS to be present upon boot):

sas2flash.efi -o -c 0 -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom

 

Reboot and enjoy

Jake

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Thanks for the write up. I received the first of two cards I ordered and was wondering how to go about flashing it myself. This is definitely something that needs to be Pinned, if possible.

 

Well, aside from the sas2flash.efi tool that's needed to flash the IT/IR firmware on a system using a UEFI bios, everything else is in that BIG "LSI Controller FW updates IR/IT modes" thread:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.0

 

So please start there and download the P10 or P11 packages that he provides in the 4th comment that contains the LSI MegaRAID with SAS2008 chipsets section (our Intel RS2WC080 card) . 

 

Unpack that and read his __READMEFIRST.txt file for the process.  The main thing that I wanted to contribute was how to do steps 5 & 6 when you are using a system with a UEFI bios.  If you are using an older non-UEFI bios, then you can do all his steps from the MSDos/FreeDOS USB boot just as he says.

 

If you do try to run his 5IT.bat and 6.bat on a UEFI bios system via DOS, you'll see:

ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program.

 

Regards,

Jake

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Yeah, go to http://www.avagotech.com/support/download-search

 

and navigate into Product Family = 6Gb/s SAS Host Bus Adapters,  then Product = SAS 9211-8i Host Bus Adapter, then hit the [sEARCH] button.  You'll find the UEFI installer under the Firmware section.

 

In the Firmware section, grab the top file, this is the latest P20 FW and BIOS Package (which is good), and the P20 UEFI Installer (this contains that sas2flash.efi tool).

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Yeah, go to http://www.avagotech.com/support/download-search

 

and navigate into Product Family = 6Gb/s SAS Host Bus Adapters,  then Product = SAS 9211-8i Host Bus Adapter, then hit the [sEARCH] button.  You'll find the UEFI installer under the Firmware section.

 

In the Firmware section, grab the top file, this is the latest P20 FW and BIOS Package (which is good), and the P20 UEFI Installer (this contains that sas2flash.efi tool).

 

After downloading these I added the sas2flash.efi to the USB drive and updated the 5it.bat and 6.bat files to reflect the new efi flash tool. Do I copy over the mptsas2.rom and sas2flsh.exe files from the P20 FW/Bios folder (specifically the DOS folder) to the USB drive as well and overwrite the existing files?

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You certainly could to that, however I created a P20/ on my USB stick and copied the following files to it:

 

Installer_P20_for_UEFI/sas2flash_efi_ebc_rel/sas2flash.efi
9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows/Firmware/HBA_9211_8i_IT/2118it.bin
9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows/sasbios_rel/mptbios.txt
9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows/sasbios_rel/mptsas2.rom

 

Then I booted to the UEFI shell, I navigate into the fs0: device's /P20/ directory manually executed the sas2flash.efi directly with the parameters found in the 5i.bat and 6.bat files (I didn't actually modify or use those two bat files with the sas2flash.efi program)...

 

Note, that specifying the mptsas2.rom on the flash command is entirely optional.  People who use this card with unRAID may want to omit it to speed up boot times so you don't have to wait for that bios to init and stuff (which can take ~10 seconds?).

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You certainly could to that, however I created a P20/ on my USB stick and copied the following files to it:

 

Installer_P20_for_UEFI/sas2flash_efi_ebc_rel/sas2flash.efi
9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows/Firmware/HBA_9211_8i_IT/2118it.bin
9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows/sasbios_rel/mptbios.txt
9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows/sasbios_rel/mptsas2.rom

 

Then I booted to the UEFI shell, I navigate into the fs0: device's /P20/ directory manually executed the sas2flash.efi directly with the parameters found in the 5i.bat and 6.bat files (I didn't actually modify or use those two bat files with the sas2flash.efi program)...

 

Note, that specifying the mptsas2.rom on the flash command is entirely optional.  People who use this card with unRAID may want to omit it to speed up boot times so you don't have to wait for that bios to init and stuff (which can take ~10 seconds?).

 

So leave this command out and it will boot up much faster?

 

-b mptsas2.rom

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I went ahead and left that last bit of command out and I was finally able to flash the card. I hope leaving out that bios file will increase the load times. I'd hate to wait those 10 seconds especially when I plan on having two of these in my server, once it is built (this weekend).

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I was trying to flash on a machine that was having the same issue but was not using UEFI. I then stumbled on how it was best to attempt to flash on another machine due to the possibility of the Bios on that particular machine being Limited. Once I attempted again on a another machine with a different motherboard I was then successful in flashing the card.

 

So if you are having problems flashing and you are not using UEFI then it's most likely an issue with that hardware the card is running on. Best to move it over to another board. I happen to be doing this at work so I have plenty of machines I can use for this.

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...I just received my 4th one of these RS2WC080 controllers.  Just like the previous 3, this 4th one crossed flashed without issue.

 

I have  two each in both of my dual CPU Xeon e5-2670 systems, where each system contains (1)8x3.5" (on card0) and (1)8x2.5" (on card1) hotswap drive cages :)

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