So yesterday evening I came down with a stomach bug which was very unpleasant, still recovering. I came down to my office this morning and found an error on the screen of the monitor connected to my supermicro server.

 

At this point there is either something wrong with the adapter, or both back planes. Feeling as I do, I didn't have the wherewithal to grab logs and just rebooted the server. On doing so I saw plenty of messages indicating it couldn't communicate with drives and when unraid finally came up, all my drives but a few on the rear backplane had red x's

 

I don't actually think there is anything wrong with the adapter, more so just a compatibility issue.

 

If I am going to buy a new adapter, does anyone have any recommendations? M1015 flashed to IT mode?

 

Thanks

 

M1015 flashed to IT mode?

 

Yes, or the Dell H310.

Do you agree with my assessment of the issues?

Could it be a faulty backplane (rather than just incompatibility)?

Difficult to say for sure but yes, that's what I would try first.

The reason I don't believe its a faulty backplane John is that its run for a period of time without issues and then BAMN it just kicks all the drives off. My gut says its a controller card incompatibility and its cheaper to replace the card at this point then the backplane.

Just got a Dell Perc H310 on Ebay for $59 CAN plus $10 shipping, should have it later this week.

 

Anyone got a link to the M1015 firmware I need to cross flash it?

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.msg259006#msg259006

 

You don't need M1015 firmware for it.

I believe the process is to flash it first with Dell IT firmware. Some people stop there as user opentoe did originally. Or you can then flash it again with generic LSI (now Avago) IT firmware, which most people do.

I guess I can't use it with its native Dell firmware?

IR mode can't be used with unRAID.

 

Do you mean IT mode? I thought the point was to flash it to IT mode for use with unRAID?

IT mode is what you want to work with unRAID. IR mode is how it comes from the factory but that doesn't work with unRAID. You need to replace the IR firmware with IT firmware.

Ah ok. Also, do you know if there is a limitation to the number of disks the H310 supports? I've seen numbers like 31 or 32? And it does support beyond 3TB drives right?

It supports 32 devices with the Dell firmware and >2TB disks.

Just curious if that 32 device limit remains when I flash the firmware or if it increases?

Just curious if that 32 device limit remains when I flash the firmware or if it increases?

 

Never tested but I assume that it will stay the same if flashed with the Dell IT firmware and change to 256 when cross-flashed with the LSI IT firmware.

So is that the reccomended path, first flash with Dell IT firmware then LSI IT firmware? I will need greater then 32 drive support.

It's the only way, it first needs a Dell IT flash to allow LSI crossflash, some users stay with the Dell firmware.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.msg259006#msg259006

Since you completely erase the card's flash memory you also have the choice of re-installing the card's BIOS or leaving it blank. Some people leave it blank so that the server boots faster. Others install it for the comfort they get seeing it identify the drives.

 

Good to know John, thanks. I think I'd rather have the BIOS present on the card so I can see it identify the drives at boot, makes troubleshooting easier.

That's my view too. It's all useful information. Just make sure you turn off any Int 13h option in the card's BIOS so that your server doesn't waste time looking for a bootable disk attached to the controller.

 

Well I got the Dell H310 today flashed it to the Dell IT firmware, proceeded to the next step and got an error saying that NV DATA PRODUCT ID and the VENDOR ID did not match so I stopped there.

 

System is booting and since it detected an unclean shutdown its doing another parity check.

 

Diagnostics attached.

 

tower-diagnostics-20170125-1838.zip

To see if this controller helps either firmware works.

 

Why not cancel the parity check and assign parity2 also? Then you can do a check and sync simultaneously, and it would help confirm if the LSI works better, since you could never finish a dual parity check before.

I seem to remember you have to use the appropriate version of LSI firmware and sas2flsh.exe (or sas2flash.efi if you're forced down that route) to get round that error. It allows you to ignore the mismatch and cross-flash anyway.

 

Just checked and the appropriate version is P7. Once you've got LSI firmware in there, then you can update that to P19 or P20.