Lenovo x3650 M5 RAID controller

martinrame · Saturday at 12:49 PM

Hi, I bought a Lenovo x3650 M5 with 5x8tb HDD SATA III and 2x500gb SSD SATA disks and found it has a ServeRAID M5210 controller that's not suitable for ZFS.

I've been reading and found the recommendation is to install an LSI Logic 9211 8i in IT mode. Can you point me to an specific link to purchase the one I need?, as I'm in Argentina I just want to do one purchase with everything I need, with cables and everything.

cracauer@ · Saturday at 12:59 PM

The 92xx will take a lot of idle power, the 93xx are using less.

Any of the ebay links might be fine.

T-Daemon · Saturday at 1:33 PM

martinrame said:
it has a ServeRAID M5210 controller that's not suitable for ZFS.

Can you explain why it is not suitable for ZFS?

The reason I'm asking is out of curiosity. There is a PR 290156 from 2025-10-11 in which the reporter can create a ZFS pool (not boot pool) on 15.0-ALPHA5, from devices attach to a IBM ServeRAID M5210 controller (Avago/LSI MegaRAID SAS-3 3108).

martinrame · Saturday at 2:50 PM

cracauer@ said:
The 92xx will take a lot of idle power, the 93xx are using less.

Any of the ebay links might be fine.

Thanks, for example this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/1264507051...ezTQATDwOB4r3K0KNqGn-uEJ8ZSjJ908aAhv4EALw_wcB

What do you think about it? will it work on the x3650 M5?

martinrame · Saturday at 2:52 PM

T-Daemon said:
Can you explain why it is not suitable for ZFS?

The reason I'm asking is out of curiosity. There is a PR 290156 from 2025-10-11 in which the reporter can create a ZFS pool (not boot pool) on 15.0-ALPHA5, from devices attach to a IBM ServeRAID M5210 controller (Avago/LSI MegaRAID SAS-3 3108).

Because for ZFS the O.S. needs to access the disks raw, not through the hardware RAID controller.

cracauer@ · Saturday at 4:22 PM

martinrame said:
Thanks, for example this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/1264507051...ezTQATDwOB4r3K0KNqGn-uEJ8ZSjJ908aAhv4EALw_wcB

What do you think about it? will it work on the x3650 M5?

I don't know that specific computer, but the controller should work in any PCIe machine.

cracauer@ · Saturday at 4:23 PM

martinrame said:
Because for ZFS the O.S. needs to access the disks raw, not through the hardware RAID controller.

Technically you can put a plain ZFS (no zraid) on top of the single raw device presented by a RAID controller.

But you shouldn't.

Phishfry · Saturday at 4:49 PM

martinrame said:
What do you think about it? will it work on the x3650 M5?

These are ebay clones. Notice the manufacturer.
LANPAN.
Who dat?
You comfortable buying clones?

Phishfry · Saturday at 10:07 PM

I just wanted to throw the fake/clone prospect out there. Not saying this is a fake card but LSI disk controllers seem to be widely faked on ebay.
There was a time I would not buy an LSI card from China but I am afraid that is no longer enough.

Take this vendor for instance. Location: US
No city? Probably just multiple shipping locations but these are flags to me.
Drop shipper. Fake vendors now send container loads and drop ship from US.

It is so hard to spot a fake controller that I am wary of any from an unknown vendor.

martinrame · 2026-01-18T18:45:27+0000

Yes, Phishfry you are right. But I already placed my order, mostly because of all comments on Amazon were favorable and because I wasn't able to find any other vendor, not even one card built by LSI/Broadcom. Let's wait for it and give a try.

Phishfry · 2026-01-18T19:00:48+0000

martinrame said:
I wasn't able to find any other vendor, not even one card built by LSI/Broadcom. Let's wait for it and give a try.

Yes that chipset went out of production many years ago. Anything genuine on the market new would be server spares.

But you have to start somewhere. I am sure I have a fake or two in my rodeo.

As far as fakes it seems to me the Intel and SuperMicro versions of LSI cards are not faked nearly as much.
The Intel cards include MegaRaid so less desirable than the SuperMicro LSI cards which they sell in both flavors including without MegaRAID.
Your really don't want hardware RAID.

Phishfry · 2026-01-18T19:15:06+0000

martinrame said:
Lenovo x3650 M5

I bought an Lenovo 530-8i LSI controller and thought it would work in a regular server board. It did not.
I found a thread on servethehome.com about flashing it to regular LSI device firmware and I ended up bricking it.
I am usually pretty good with the flashing tools but Lenovo is different..

Phishfry · 2026-01-18T19:26:25+0000

T-Daemon said:
Can you explain why it is not suitable for ZFS?

T-Daemon said:
attach to a IBM ServeRAID M5210 controller (Avago/LSI MegaRAID SAS-3 3108)

Just because you can attach does not mean it is ideal.

Whenever you put a layer between your drives and the motherboard it eats up cycles. There is a CPU on these MegaRAID and everything goes through that.

I found out with the Avago TriMode adapters what a severe speed penalty a controller card causes versus straight thru PCIe adapters.
The difference is stark. With either the combo mode firmware or nvme firmware the drives under-performed by 25%.
For what benefit?

One disadvantage of the Hardware RAID model is drive portability or lack of.

Michael-O · 2026-01-18T20:54:14+0000

Your ROC supports "Both RAID and JBOD (pass-thru mode with system drives) configurations". The controller should be covered by `mrsas(4)` and you should see all `daX` devices through CAM layer. It should be logically identical to https://plone.lucidsolutions.co.nz/...figuring-jbod-with-a-lsi-2208-controller/view and https://razva.ro/set-jbod-lsi-megaraid-cards-cachecade/. I have a LSI2208 which has JBOD. Configured all drives and see the pure Seagate drives. Created a zmirror on top of it.