I've got an Aberdeen 24bay enclosure that includes a MegaRAID 9280-24i4e. I contacted support and this card cannot be flashed into IT mode for JBOD support, but they did suggest configuring single disk RAID-0 virtual drives that should then be supported by software RAID solutions. Any reason this wouldn't work with unRAID 6.2.x? Does that become a management hassle if I need to replace drives?

 

I already have 2x SASLP-MV8 cards.. should I just ebay the card and use the funds to buy 2 more SASLP-MV8 cards (with a whole lot of change)? I'm trying to be responsible and use as much of the parts in this chassis as possible, but at the same time I don't want management tasks to be overly complicated or a long term hassle.

I've got an Aberdeen 24bay enclosure that includes a MegaRAID 9280-24i4e. I contacted support and this card cannot be flashed into IT mode for JBOD support, but they did suggest configuring single disk RAID-0 virtual drives that should then be supported by software RAID solutions. Any reason this wouldn't work with unRAID 6.2.x? Does that become a management hassle if I need to replace drives?

 

I get that the card can't get IT firmware flashed on it, but -- any reason you can't just configure the drives as stand alone (still within IR mode firmware)? Have you tried that?

 

This is typically done either via the card's own BIOS menus (remove VHDs, set each drive as SA or JBOD), or via the megacli software interface (e.g. "megacli makejbod -physdrv[32,0] -a1" - the numeric parameters obviously vary per your config).

I don't believe so. Per support:

 

  Notes Log:

***********************************************************************

 

==== State: Investigating by: xxxxxxxx on 15 November 2016 14:51:35 ====

The 9280-24i4e does not support JBOD mode but you can create single disk raid-0

Software raid should be able to raid across multiple single disk raid-0.

 

Newer models like the 9271, 9286, 9361 and 9380 do support JBOD.

 

Thanks,

Broadcom DCSG Technical Support

[email protected]

Tom

I don't believe so. Per support:

 

  Notes Log:

...

 

Yep. I'd still try if I were you. Heard too many "can't do that" statements from tech support types that turned out to be incorrect. At the end of the day all these MegaRAID cards use the same controller chips. Usually, the IR mode software does allow you to not configure the drives into arrays. I'd try to use megacli for it.

 

Let me know if you need some assistance re using megacli for this - I can post a short how-to here.

Interesting, I'll spend some time looking at that. Those settings are set independent of whatever disk might be connected?

 

A show stopper with the single disk raid 0 config is a scenario where I would need to move those disks to a new controller.

 

Thanks for the input and guidance.

Interesting, I'll spend some time looking at that. Those settings are set independent of whatever disk might be connected?

 

Independent, inasmuch as the disk being freely movable to another port, controller or host - absolutely.

One might need to reconfig the controller when moving disks around (for example if ports 0-1 are configured as stand alone and ports 2-7 are configured RAID5 - probably not your case).

 

A show stopper with the single disk raid 0 config is a scenario where I would need to move those disks to a new controller.

 

Yeah, that could become a bit messy (although workable, with some TLC).

 

Thanks for the input and guidance.

 

You bet. As I said, if you need some shortcuts wrt working with megacli, let me know (in terms of its CLI syntax it is the single worst UI implementation I have ever seen). Would be good if you post your results here for posterity. Good luck!

I'll give a it a try - I don't want to do anything that would preclude me from just selling it and taking the proceeds to buy another supermicro card, compute resources, etc. If I do get the appropriate settings configured, is there even driver support within the latest versions of unRAID? That was a concern I found in older threads from years past.

I'll give a it a try - I don't want to do anything that would preclude me from just selling it and taking the proceeds to buy another supermicro card, compute resources, etc.

 

The setup discussed above is simple RAID card configuration. Nothing fancy, no modification.

 

If I do get the appropriate settings configured, is there even driver support within the latest versions of unRAID? That was a concern I found in older threads from years past.

 

There should be - though I can't answer that authoritatively.

So I've got the chassis home and my OS/disks moved over. It also has one of these cards with two 15k SAS drives attached: LSI MegaRAID SATA / SAS 9260-4i

 

They're configured in a raid and presenting a virtual volume to the server, which can be seen as a boot device in the bios, but it doesn't appear in the unRAID gui. My thought was to use these as the cache drive and utilize hardware raid and present the single virtual disk vs. cache pooling. Thoughts?

You probably need to attach the diagnostics zip so people can check and determine if the server can see the Megaraid (has drivers)

 

done, thanks!

tower-diagnostics-20161117-2329.zip

So I've got the chassis home and my OS/disks moved over. It also has one of these cards with two 15k SAS drives attached: LSI MegaRAID SATA / SAS 9260-4i

 

They're configured in a raid and presenting a virtual volume to the server, which can be seen as a boot device in the bios, but it doesn't appear in the unRAID gui. My thought was to use these as the cache drive and utilize hardware raid and present the single virtual disk vs. cache pooling. Thoughts?

 

The Linux kernel sees the card and sets it up as a PCI device, but there's no driver for it.  You might try 6.3-rc4, perhaps it's been added?  Or just check the release notes for all of the 6.3 releases.  I don't know which driver module it needs.

 

In general, unRAID has not included RAID support for RAID cards, only the JBOD support, so I'm not sure how enthusiastic Lime Technology will be about this.  But if the BIOS can see it as a boot device, then that may not be a problem.

 

Here's the lspci report on the card: (no kernel driver listed for it)

03:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 2108 [Liberator] [1000:0079] (rev 05)

Subsystem: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 9260-4i [1000:9260]

Driver for these cards are the "megaraid" drivers; might need a refresh to recognize and support some PCI IDs.

 

Driver (and latest firmware) can be found here. Note that the readme file for the firmware implies that JBOD is supported (as is the case with all MegaRAID chips I've bumped into).

 

If you still want to have a go at using megacli to reconfigure your drives to stand alone (single HDD JBODs), post here.

 

I don't have an overwhelming need to make this work, I was just going to reuse the cards if it could be done with relative ease. I'll sell it and buy two of the supermicro cards that work out of the box.

You should try 6.3.0-rc4, I believe it includes more SAS controller drivers.

Nah, I've gone ahead and ordered two more supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 cards. My motherboard has 8 pci-e x8 slots so there's no real loss with using 4 cards vs 1. I figure this will let me separate the two parity drives across separate controllers as well.

 

Anybody want to buy the megaraid for cheap? I'm only really interested in recouping costs for the above, so $200 would net you a perfectly good Megaraid card that sells for $1300 new.