IBM ServerRaid Br10i FRU PCI-e 8x SAS HBA's

[Talos]

Anyone know if these SAS HBA's are supported by the drivers in unraid? The card is actually a LSI SAS3082E-R card that comes from an IBM server. They use the LSI1068E chipset and can be found pretty cheaply on ebay (like the old Dell Perc5/i deals). I've been considering moving from my current 2xAdaptec 1430SA setup to two of the supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards but I can get two of the BR10i's for the same price as one SASLP so if its supported under unraid it would be great.

 

http://www.scsi4me.com/ibm-serveraid-br10i-8-port-pci-express-sas-raid-controller.html

[BRiT]

I think there's been mixed results with cards that use the LSI1068E chipset. Some have used the Perc 5e to add drives to their array but reported some issues with HDIO warning errors or indicated that unRAID couldn't spin down the drives. Some discussion exists over here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4990.0

 

 

[Talos]

Thanks for the link BRiT.

 

Seems that some people get the cards other various 1068E based cards working but get the same HDIO errors that the Supermicro SASLP cards get (ie: Apr 21 20:11:40 Tower ata_id[3027]: HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed for '/dev/block/8:16') but the cards still work for the most part.

 

They seem to use the mptsas driver instead of the mvsas driver that the SASLP uses also. Was hoping someone had tested either the BR10i or SAS3082E-R card though. The closest I could see was where someone had tested the SAS3081-E which is a slightly different card.

 

mm.. is $120 bucks worth a punt??

[BRiT]

The reason for the different drivers are the cards use different controller chipsets [ http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10 ].

 

[Talos]

The reason for the different drivers are the cards use different controller chipsets [ http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10 ].

 

Yeah i know. I'm wondering if Unraid currently includes the latest version of the mptsas driver? I'd love to get these cards working under unraid as they are a great bargain if you manage to snag them from ebay cheaply.

[BRiT]

The 4.5.6 version uses kernel 2.6.32.9. I haven't tracked the changes in the MPTSAS driver (I think it's the CONFIG_FUSION option?) to provide any additional details or comments on how many changes have occurred since then.

 

Its not certain if 5.0 will use the kernel 2.6.35 series. However, unRAID 5.0 is in beta, with a lot of fluctuations going on around the User Interface realm to provide a richer experience. It's unknown how many betas or how long it will be in beta.

 

I think I might just jump on this deal. I've been in a spending mood lately.

[BRiT]

Posting this for future reference...

 

Here's the manual for the card: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/systems/support/system_x_pdf/ibm_doc_sraidbr_10i-0508_install-users-guide.pdf

 

The eBay listings shows the slightly newer revision 44E8690 which is the replacement for the 44E8689, but should use identical controller parts.

 

From the manual, the controller has an 8x physical connector, supports x8 x4 PCI-Express slots by automatically downshifting, uses 2 of the typical x4 SFF-8087 mini-SAS connectors, includes internal activity leds, and has leds for Fault and Heartbeat and Activity, and has a 4 pin header for drive activity leds.

 

[Ostrich]

BRiT, did you end up getting these cards and did they work OK?

 

im thinking about getting one to complete my norco 4224 build, already have an AOC-SASLP-MV8 and wondering whether i should invest $50 bucks for one of these vs $150 for another SASLP-MV8.

 

Thanks

[BRiT]

I did pickup the cards, but I have not had time to test them out. It's one of many items on my list to try out. I think I have the Kernel prepped with the proper drivers already. It's just a matter of getting a solid block of time available to tinker.

[jamerson9]

I plugged one into my spare box and it seems to be working. I seem to get spin downs, temperature and smart readings.

 

I've just copied some test files over to the disk on the Br10i and so far no problems. The syslog looks fine to me. But, as I really don't know much about these devices I am attaching the syslog so more knowledgeable people can have a gander at it.

 

Anyone know where I can get a pci bracket for this card?

 

FYI: Stock 3 drive 4.5.6 version.

 

Edit : The stock UnRaid page shows the temperature of the drives and shows flashing green dot for spun down. However, the unMenu does not show temperature nor spun up down state.

 

syslog.zip

[bcbgboy13]

I plugged one into my spare box and it seems to be working. I seem to get spin downs, temperature and smart readings.

 

I've just copied some test files over to the disk on the Br10i and so far no problems. The syslog looks fine to me. But, as I really don't know much about these devices I am attaching the syslog so more knowledgeable people can have a gander at it.

 

Anyone know where I can get a pci bracket for this card?

 

FYI: Stock 3 drive 4.5.6 version.

 

Edit : The stock UnRaid page shows the temperature of the drives and shows flashing green dot for spun down. However, the unMenu does not show temperature nor spun up down state.

 

You sure you have attached the right syslog as there is no drive attached to this controller in the syslog above. It looks as you only have a small SATA notebook drive and another small IDE drive.

 

[jamerson9]

I plugged one into my spare box and it seems to be working. I seem to get spin downs, temperature and smart readings.

 

I've just copied some test files over to the disk on the Br10i and so far no problems. The syslog looks fine to me. But, as I really don't know much about these devices I am attaching the syslog so more knowledgeable people can have a gander at it.

 

Anyone know where I can get a pci bracket for this card?

 

FYI: Stock 3 drive 4.5.6 version.

 

Edit : The stock UnRaid page shows the temperature of the drives and shows flashing green dot for spun down. However, the unMenu does not show temperature nor spun up down state.

 

You sure you have attached the right syslog as there is no drive attached to this controller in the syslog above. It looks as you only have a small SATA notebook drive and another small IDE drive.

 

The small notebook 60Gb SATA drive is connected to the raid card.

What do I have to look for in the syslog to find out to which controller a hard drive connected to?

 

Edit : What other information can I supply or action can I take to check that this card is working correctly with UnRaid? I don't want to move it to my production machine yet, as from the threads about LSI1068E chipset cards indicate that it is not ready for a production UnRaid server.

[bcbgboy13]

The small notebook 60Gb SATA drive is connected to the raid card.

What do I have to look for in the syslog to find out to which controller a hard drive connected to?

 

Edit : What other information can I supply or action can I take to check that this card is working correctly with UnRaid? I don't want to move it to my production machine yet, as from the threads about LSI1068E chipset cards indicate that it is not ready for a production UnRaid server.

 

You claim to have a Stock 3 drive 4.5.6 version server but they are only two HDs visible in the inventory:

 

Nov 15 18:16:33 Tower emhttp: Device inventory:

Nov 15 18:16:33 Tower emhttp: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0 host2 (sdb) ST96812AS_5PJB4MEX

Nov 15 18:16:33 Tower emhttp: pci-0000:01:04.0-ide-0:0 ide0 (hda) HTS721080G9AT00_MPC411Y4G2DSWC

 

You have to search for the pci strings to see how they are identified - 0000:00:1f.2 looks like your onboard SATA controller (only two ports) and 0000:01:04.2 is your onboard IDE controller.

 

The LS1068E on the other hand is on 0000:04:00.0:

 

Nov 15 18:16:33 Tower kernel: Fusion MPT base driver 3.04.12

Nov 15 18:16:33 Tower kernel: Copyright © 1999-2008 LSI Corporation

Nov 15 18:16:33 Tower kernel: Fusion MPT SAS Host driver 3.04.12

Nov 15 18:16:33 Tower kernel: mptsas 0000:04:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16

Nov 15 18:16:33 Tower kernel: mptbase: ioc0: Initiating bringup

 

I myself want these to work as Dell Canada is selling them brand new for Can$ 80 and I have two waiting to be used.

And this being an older chip and also on PCIe x8 interface should provide more bandwidth compared to the currently used SM Marvell based one.

 

[jamerson9]

The small notebook 60Gb SATA drive is connected to the raid card.

What do I have to look for in the syslog to find out to which controller a hard drive connected to?

 

Edit : What other information can I supply or action can I take to check that this card is working correctly with UnRaid? I don't want to move it to my production machine yet, as from the threads about LSI1068E chipset cards indicate that it is not ready for a production UnRaid server.

 

You claim to have a Stock 3 drive 4.5.6 version server but they are only two HDs visible in the inventory:

 

By this I mean that I am using the free (3 drives) version of UnRaid server. I have connected only two drives as really the only reliable spare drive I have is the 60GB SATA one. The 80GB IDE gives occasional read errors.

 

I will check again that I have connected the SATA drive to the correct ports.

[jamerson9]

Ok. It was too good to be true.  What's the chance of plugging in the one SATA cable that goes to the motherboard, rather than the four to the Br10i. 

 

I've now put the SATA drive on the Br10i controller and I am getting the same problems as those outlined in the LSI1068E chipset thread.

 

I had put in a really old 120GB drive for a parity and built the parity with 80GB IDE as disk1 and the 60G SATA as disk2 (on the motherboard SATA port).

I rebooted with the 60GB SATA drive on the Br10i controller and added the drive back in as disk2. UnRaid did not recognize that is was the old disk2 drive and proceeded to rebuild disk2.

 

The 120GB and 80GB IDE drives are really old ones that I just bunged into the machine to test the Br10i card out so please ignore the errors from those drives.

 

I am attaching one syslog using UnRaid 4.5.6 and one using UnRaid 5.0b2 with this controller card for the people who understand this way better than me.

 

I have this machine available as a test bed so if you would like for me to try things out please feel free to ask. I would really like to get this card working as how often can you get a controller card cheaper than the cable. 

syslogv4.5.6.txt.zip

syslog5.02b.txt.zip

[jamerson9]

Log with 4.5.8 for anyone who is interested. Again, please ignore any disk errors from the two IDE drives.

syslog.4.5.8.txt.zip

[jamerson9]

See this link for updates on LSI1068E chipset SAS controllers.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7914.msg86610#msg86610

[jamerson9]

Log for version 4.6-rc3

syslog-2010-11-23v4.6-rc3.zip

[doobiedo]

Could someone point me in the right direction for the actual firmware for a BR10i version 44E8690, I've only found the firmware revision for the 44E8689 version.

 

Currently running version 2.66 but the 44E8689 newest firmware is Version 7.72 Critical

 

Thanks

[BRiT]

I now have enough free time to start hacking around with this card, so I wanted to ask anyone else which version of firmware are you running? Is there any preferred version?

[jamerson9]

I now have enough free time to start hacking around with this card, so I wanted to ask anyone else which version of firmware are you running? Is there any preferred version?

Mine is at 1.30.00, the latest is 1.30.05.00 which adds support for 2TB LUNS or greater. Haven't updated yet as it seem to need a upgrade binary supported official OS to do so.

 

Looking forward to 5b3.

[BRiT]

If the card reports correctly, then mine seems to be at 01.27.86.00. I'll be trying out the firmware update after some preclear-s finish.

 

Here's something I just picked up last night when toying around... at least on a Slackware 13.2 (Current) system with the mptsas drivers.

 

You can see some information on the controller card by looking at /sys/class/sas_host/host#/device/scsi_host/host#/ directory where the host# applies to the appropriate card. The files in particular board_name, version_bios, version_fw, and version_product.

 

To determine the host #, you can use lsscsi --host or lsscsi if you know which drives you have on which card.

[BRiT]

For what it's worth, I updated the firmware on the cards successfully using the IBM 2.72 update from http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-5077837 [WinOS] / http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-5077845 [Linux]. I had no issues running this within my 64bit Slackware 13.2 server after I found some tricks. 

 

In both cases, I had to work around their automatic updater not wanting to perform the update. In Linux, I used an LD_PRELOAD trick to prevent it from removing the temp files in Linux ( LD_PRELOAD=./unlink.so ./bm_fw_sraidbr_10i-2.72_linux_32-64.bin -s ). In Windows I looked at the %TEMP% dir before I closed the Wizard dialog. Once the directory is found, the interesting files are inside the image/ subdirectory.

 

On Linux the update was as simple as running "./lsiIRupdate ctlr-info.txt". It updated both cards. I then rebooted with a full power cycle. On reboot the new firmware version is 1.30.05.00.

 

 

The LD_PRELOAD unlink trick is as follows. First you need to create unlink.c and then create a shared library of it.

int unlink(const char *pathname) { return 0; }
int unlinkat(int dirfd, const char *pathname, int flags) { return 0; }

% gcc unlink.c --shared -o unlink.so

 

I ran across the tricks and info from here: http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=903863

 

[doobiedo]

Cheers for the info BRiT, just upgraded my card to FW: 01.30.05.00 Bios: 06.30.00.00 

[SSD]

Ok - decided to spring for a BR10i for my new server.

 

Couple questions ...

 

1 - If you configure a RAID-1 volume, does unRAID see the "disk" and allow you to use it.  My hope is to be able to have a RAID-1 cache drive, and use the other 6 ports as JBOD.  Based on manual this seems possible.

 

2 - About the firmware update - what is the best way to apply it.  Will it run from inside unRAID, or would I need a full Slackware install?  If not in unRAID, is there some USB (or CD) bootable OS I could use as a platform to boot to do the install.  If Linux install is too hard, what is required to run the Windows install?  Doc says it runs from a command line - does it really need Windows?  How about just Free DOS?  The upgrade instructions are pretty thin.

 

Thanks for the help and support.  Sure hope Tom gets this puppy fully supported (at least for SATA drives).  Sounds like disk temps are the last hurdle - hopefully not too hard.

 

Thanks!