Hi Unraid Team and Unraid Users/Admins,

 

I have been skimming and reading through the forum and I find mine odd as of the situation.

To start off, I would begin with my current setup and goals so that everyone reading are on the same page as me.

Then followed by the scenario, validation and connection I made and the result.

 

Current setup:

XenServer 6.5 SP1

Openfiler 2.99.1

Elastix Server 4.0

-- all this setup have IBM 5110 raid controller working on them smoothly for 2yrs straight.

 

 

Raid Controller: IBM 5110 (5100 series)  using LSI2208 ROC

                      8 sas/sata ports

                      https://lenovopress.com/tips0857-serveraid-m5110-m5110e?redbooks-divestiture&cm_mc_uid=52503841307914705454114&cm_mc_sid_50200000=1470548736

 

Current Lab Setup:

Physical machine: IBM x3300

Hard Disk Drives: 4 x 1TB IBM Enterprise Drives

Raid Controller: 1 x IBM 5110

 

 

Goal: Previous setup XenServer 6.5 will be moving to Unraid 6.

For Nas Instead of Openfiler > Unraid 6.

For VM Instead of XenServer > Unraid 6.

For Elastix will create VM and assign pci devices the telephony cards to VM.

 

Preliminary stage - the setting up.

I Followed the video setups. And have arrived at adding parity and disk drives and cache.

 

Scenario #1:

Raid Card Configuration: Setup inside raid controller.

1) Delete all existing configuration. (delete virtual drives existing)

2) setup all drives to jbod, no raid setup, no any unecessary configurations - just plain jbod.

Disk Drive 0: JBOD

Disk Drive 1: JBOD

Disk Drive 2: JBOD

Disk Drive 3: JBOD

 

3) Physical connectivity:

Mini-Sas backplane --> connected to --> MiniSas Raid Controlller.

 

Boot server, access web gui went to Main (tab).

Result: No hard drives visible.

 

 

 

Validation #1

Went to Tools, view System Devices

Result: Raid Card is detected and visible.

04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. G200eR2

06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)

06:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)

06:00.2 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)

06:00.3 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)

0c:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation C608/C606/X79 series chipset PCI Express Upstream Port (rev 06)

0d:08.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation C608/C606/X79 series chipset PCI Express Virtual Switch Port (rev 06)

16:00.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 2208 [Thunderbolt] (rev 05)

ff:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E5/Core i7 QPI Link 0 (rev 07)

 

Validation #2

Perhaps, (just reasoning)

as what other threads are talking about Unraid OS prefer HDDS/SSDs should go directly to Motherboard sas/sata ports | hba's | and/or other Raid Controllers are exception.

 

I tried moving connection from mini-sas port of Raid Controller --> to the Mother board mini-sas port. (Scenario #2).

 

 

 

Scenario #2:

1) Physical connectivity:

Mini-Sas backplane --> connected to --> MiniSas Motherboard port.

 

Boot server, access web gui went to Main (tab).

Result: Still, No hard drives visible. 

 

 

Gentleman, did I miss anything?

Kindly let me know if I need to provide additional info.

I'm afraid jbod will not be enough for unraid to see the disks. The disks should be visible to u raid as if they are connected to a non-raid controller. Normally the raid cards have to be flashed to IT mode, but from a quick google search, your card doesn't seem to support IT mode.

The storage guys will most likely chime in when the States wake up 

The disks should be visible to u raid as if they are connected to a non-raid controller.

 

You're right, it seems to be that way. However sata port on the board can't accommodate enough.

I'll be having a new 24 bay rack and plan to use existing - 3 x IBM 5110 - 8 ports ea card.

 

Did further troubling shooting and further googling.

Item #1)  And I did find a very helpful thread:

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

This thread is really helpful as it talks about LSI SAS2004 (4 ports), LSI SAS2008 (8 ports) and  LSI SAS2116 (16 ports) chipset.  And it includes my Raid on Chipset whichs is LSI SAS2208.

             

Credit to madburg, BRiT et al for these. 

-------------------------------------------------------------

I presume this is the IT/IR that has to flash my h/w raid?

-------------------------------------------------------------

 

Going back from my previous testing scenarios.

Scenario #1

I'll put it the result after I have flashed my IBM 5110 (LSI SAS2208 roc) raid controller

Item #1.1) What does IT and IR meant?

Item #1.2) I don't want my raid card to end like a brick. Flashing means replacing firmware of the raid controller, right?

Can I still reflash my previous firmware back, after I flashed it with the new firmware one on this thread?

Item #1.3) It has two firmware available, I presume that I have flash my raid controller with firmware version 10 first, before version 11?

 

Presuming this will work perfectly work, then this is the last remaining thing for me to do.

 

 

Scenario #2

Result: All my drives are already detected now, without using the un-flashed raid controller.

 

Solution: my board have two mini-sas ports (port 0 and port 1), plugged on port 0 - hence now all hdds are detected.

Initially I accidentally plugged it on port1, hence it was not detected due to FoD (feature on demand) of this board, which is not enabled.