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


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Why do you say that?  Are you referring to this statement:

 

"NO earlier controllers, such as the PERC4/5/6, SAS5/6 (or ANY other Dell controller not mentioned) have this support and in some cases, even though you may be able to see the drive, this has NOT been tested or validated, so possible data loss could be experienced. ONLY use the Dell H700 and H800 with the proper firmware to ensure a tested and validated >2TB solution! For non-Dell controllers, contact the controller vendor for their support statement on >2TB drives."

 

Sounds like something the lawyers always like to throw in.  I take Hitachi's statement of compatibility more seriously than this cya statement by DELL.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

I don't suppose anyone has found a magic firmware bios revision that's compatible with 3TB drives for the LSI 1068E yet?

 

I've asked the question on my LSI firmware post if anyone (including bjp999) has flashed to the LSI (P20) IT firmware and tested with a 3TB drive, no replies as of yet.

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Will card work with the Supermicro x7spa motherboard, seeing that this is a PCIe x8 card and the motherboard has a PCIe x4 interface?

 

 

It "should".

 

It depends on the way the card is powered. I run an areca PCIe 8x 1220 on an X7SPA-HF. an 8 drive raid 5 with sammy F4's performs at about 500MB/s.

that is why SM put the 4X in an 8X socket.

 

I don't suppose anyone has found a magic firmware bios revision that's compatible with 3TB drives for the LSI 1068E yet?

Someone in the "ESXi with pass-through" thread said they have and listed a bios rev.

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Johnm, the only reference I could find on the "Topic: UnRAID on VMWare ESXi with Raw Device Mapping" was this:

 

Regarding the 3tb and the Br10i depending on what version of firmware you got when you purchased you may need to update the firmware. (if from ebay just do the firmware upgrade cause they sell them with old firmware).

 

I used this link (1068E) to get me going with the upgrade.

 

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

 

But the poster did not exactly state if once mounted all 3TB were usable. And that goes back to the question I have been asking, has anyone with a BR10i flashed their card to LSI (P20) IT mode firmware and tried a 3TB drive and once mounted were all 3TB usable... I sold mine to a friend and another friend has one (basically I flash all the LSI cards at work for all the guys had went to unRAID), I am just going to have to lend one of them my 3TB drive and get the answer, once and for all.

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I do believe he stated earlier he is running a 3TB drive. then what you quoted. try tossing him a PM.

 

Again, the best way of knowing is hands on or lots of people stating it works.

 

For example, supermicro said the MV8 is not 3TB compatible. I am running 4 on one right now as a beta test (then again it might end up a disaster in a few days/weeks).

 

I have considered getting 2 for my backup server. if they do work, i'll get 2.

 

 

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From a conversation HERE

 

MANY people claimed the BR10i can see the whole 3TB's, MANY people asked if this was true, no one ever replied back and thats fine as those seemed to be occasional people who would post and could easily (which they did) post incorrect facts.

 

Sorry if I became inactive in these discussions.  I sort of lost interest when I learned the BR10i was getting firmware updates but still not supporting 3T drives.  If that changes, I will be very interested again.  I am, however, on the lookout for people asking about buying or selling these cards.  Before I bought mine I wish someone had told me (of course no one knew then), so I am trying to make sure people understand the realities of this card.

 

BTW, I have flashed my BR10i 3-4 times.  Most recently in March.  Here is a link to the most recent flashing ...

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7451.msg112524#msg112524

 

I was hopeful that the more recent update (I found it about a month ago) might support 3T, but BRiT explained not.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.msg130051#msg130051

 

I did some further research at that time and could find no one using 3T drives with a BR10i, and although I was planning to flash again, decided it was pointelss and did not.

 

One reason for the confusion, as BRiT explains, is the card is a RAID card, and that means with multiple physical drives, the RAID array of combined capacities of physical disks CAN appear as a > 2.2TB drive to the OS.  But until recently the BR10i would not allow you to create a > 2.2T RAID drive, but now it can.  But appears the individual disks are still limited to 2.2T.

 

I see you did an experiment with a friend's BR10i and found it did NOT support 3T physical disks.  Thanks for doing that and clearing it up 100%.  It is not such a big deal for me now, as my BR10i is connected to 2T disks that I have no plans to replace in the near future.  I have plenty of other ports for 3T+ drives.  Once there is some evidence that this board will support 3T drives, I will try flashing again.

 

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Hi guys,

 

I just installed one of these cards to test if it works better than AOC-SASLP-MV8 which is always giving errors with 5.x, however I cannot get into the configuration screen, I am pressing Ctrl+C and it says that it will go into the screen once it has initialized however then it just continues to boot, my issue is that I need to be able to disable Int13 so it boots from my usb dongle again. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Hi guys,

 

I just installed one of these cards to test if it works better than AOC-SASLP-MV8 which is always giving errors with 5.x, however I cannot get into the configuration screen, I am pressing Ctrl+C and it says that it will go into the screen once it has initialized however then it just continues to boot, my issue is that I need to be able to disable Int13 so it boots from my usb dongle again. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

You can try another slot on the board, but I had to move mine to another computer to get it setup. Once I had it flashed and setup I moved it back to the machine.

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  • 4 weeks later...

just an FYI this card isn't working with spin down for the ST32000542AS drives. works for awhile and then it will drop a disk from the array at random. I see a spin down in the log but no spin up so yea its gonna have an IO error. not sure why its not spinning up the drive first. I'll just set all the drives back to no spin down :(

 

Oct 26 07:17:37 Fileserver02 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdg, sector 3324045384 (Errors)
Oct 26 07:17:37 Fileserver02 kernel: md: disk4 read error (Errors)
Oct 26 07:17:37 Fileserver02 kernel: handle_stripe read error: 3324045320/3, count: 1 (Errors)
Oct 26 07:17:37 Fileserver02 kernel:  end_device-9:3: mptsas: ioc0: removing sata device: fw_channel 0, fw_id 4, phy 3,sas_addr 0x52928077260656c (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:37 Fileserver02 kernel:  phy-9:3: mptsas: ioc0: delete phy 3, phy-obj (0xf070d200) (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:37 Fileserver02 kernel:  port-9:3: mptsas: ioc0: delete port 3, sas_addr (0x52928077260656c) (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:37 Fileserver02 kernel: sd 9:0:5:0: [sdg] Synchronizing SCSI cache (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:37 Fileserver02 kernel: sd 9:0:5:0: [sdg]  Result: hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00 (System)
Oct 26 07:17:40 Fileserver02 kernel: mptsas: ioc0: attaching sata device: fw_channel 0, fw_id 4, phy 3, sas_addr 0x52928077260656c (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:40 Fileserver02 kernel: scsi 9:0:6:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST32000542AS     CC35 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:40 Fileserver02 kernel: sd 9:0:6:0: [sdh] 3907029168 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.81 TiB) (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:40 Fileserver02 kernel: sd 9:0:6:0: [sdh] Write Protect is off (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:40 Fileserver02 kernel: sd 9:0:6:0: [sdh] Mode Sense: 73 00 00 08 (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:40 Fileserver02 kernel: sd 9:0:6:0: [sdh] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:40 Fileserver02 kernel:  sdh: sdh1 (Drive related)
Oct 26 07:17:40 Fileserver02 kernel: sd 9:0:6:0: [sdh] Attached SCSI disk (Drive related)

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Maybe I should buy another card. Maybe I got 5 bad drives or the card is bad. the only thing that doesn't work is the spindown/spinup and its random but it doesn't do it on the 2 Samsung drives i have with it

What version of unRAID and what is your complete HW setup? Sound more like HW and unRAID 5 Beta version you are running that is causing the drop outs. Also there are times the power cable to the drives are bad.

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Maybe I should buy another card. Maybe I got 5 bad drives or the card is bad. the only thing that doesn't work is the spindown/spinup and its random but it doesn't do it on the 2 Samsung drives i have with it

What version of unRAID and what is your complete HW setup? Sound more like HW and unRAID 5 Beta version you are running that is causing the drop outs. Also there are times the power cable to the drives are bad.

 

I was running 12a, now I'm running 13

 

core2 e6300

Msi p7n diamond

4 gigs of kingston

4 of the ST32000542AS

1 F1 HD103UJ 1TB

1 F1 HD753LJ (cache)

Antec Neo Power 500 500W

 

I've tried swapping the memory board and powersupply. still does it. im going to dig up 6 sata cables i guess and move them to the onboard controller and see if i still have issues.

 

 

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