Upgrading Previously-Fine Marvell SASLP Controllers to 6.0+ Compliant LSI


wheel

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Earlier this year, a disk inexplicably dropped from my array (but looked fine on SMART), and my Marvell AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI Express x4 Low Profile Controllers were identified as the culprit (see attached logs for where the machine was left last time it was active - I have not turned it back on since they were captured). Those cards were totally fine in my 5.0 days, but I'm on 6.0+ now and forever with this box, so...

 

I'm finally ready to make the LSI Controller upgrade and get this box back up and running! I thought I'd ask three big questions in here before I put any money down just to be safe:

 

(1) From what I've read on IT flashing, I personally won't have an easy time of doing it (will need to disable and mess with a pretty crowded active unraid box regardless of which board I use to flash the controller), so unless the cost difference is double or more what I'd pay for something I need to flash, I'm fine with paying a premium for a plug-n-play return to form. It sounds like Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA LSI 9211-8i P20 IT Mode Low Profile or HP H220 6Gbps SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 cards might be good options for my setup, but I figured I'd check in here with my diagnostics to be safe.

 

(2) If I'm getting Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA LSI 9211-8i P20 IT Mode Low Profile or HP H220 6Gbps SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 or something completely different, is there a particular retailer I should steer toward or country I should avoid in hopes of getting my shipment within a week or so of ordering? Right now I'm leaning toward "The Art of Server" on eBay, who pre-flashes, prices seem right (especially for the Dell) and seems fast on shipping.

 

(3) Once the cards arrive, should I take any special steps in terms of re-attaching drive cables, or do anything on the unraid GUI before I remove the SASLPs and install the LSIs? Since the April problem disk's apparently physically fine, I'm hoping to get everything back to where it was in April by simply buying new cards and replacing the old ones, but I'm paranoid there's a step I'm missing despite all the threads I've gone through on these Marvell issues.

 

Bonus Question: Am I looking at this entirely wrong? Am I stuck in the past and there's something new I could be doing with controller cards vs getting another pair of low-profile 8-SAS-lane cards, and I'm completely overlooking it? I think I'm on the right track, but again, asking to be safe; I don't upgrade often, so I may as well future proof as much as possible (don't really need more drive performance day to day, but faster parity checks would be nice).

 

Thanks in advance to everyone for any guidance before I embark on my biggest unraid hardware upgrade since I started using the product 8 years ago!

tower-diagnostics-20190418-2316.zip tower-diagnostics-20190418-2344.zip

Edited by wheel
Subject Context ("Previously-Fine")
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