Other kernel module mfi / mps - lsi 9211-2008

susannej

susannej

Hello again,

maybe you could do me a favour and give me some explanations...

I bought an LSI 9211-8i 2008 and flashed it to IT-mode (puh, hardest part was getting an efi64-shell V 1.x ?).

Before that, I looked for some "alikes" like IBM 1015 and Dell 310 etc. But I got an LSI 9211-8i.

Now I realized, that the mps-module is for the LSI and - if I would have bought an IBM, the mfi-module should be used...

If they are both the same, why are there 2 different modules? Or is that for the RAID-functionality? And if the latter, should I load the mps-module for my IT-mode flashed LSI...?

Best regards, Susanne.
 
Thanks a lot!
After "googling" again, I found, that the IBM 1015 is a LSI 9240 (didn't found that information before... sorry for that!) [1015, 9240] -> mfi.

Please allow me another question, they say, that the LSI 9211 could handle 256 drives, I think - if I would like to use more than 8 drives, I would need an expander. Is there support in FreeBSD for SAS-Expander? Or would you prefere a second controller? (I think a second controller is prefered, because of the data-rate through PCIe?)
[It's the first time for me to have a little deeper look into this (SAS). Our 2 Storage-Backends in our company, where I installed FreeNAS on, worked out of the box, but now, with my homeserver, I'd like to understand it a bit more. - The last "self-build" server had SCSI and the good old "vinum", which was fairly new at that time]
 
susannej said:
Please allow me another question, they say, that the LSI 9211 could handle 256 drives, I think - if I would like to use more than 8 drives, I would need an expander.
Click to expand...
Correct.

susannej said:
Is there support in FreeBSD for SAS-Expander?
Click to expand...
Yes.

susannej said:
Or would you prefere a second controller? (I think a second controller is prefered, because of the data-rate through PCIe?)
Click to expand...
It depends on the workload. And yes, you have to cram all the data from those drives through the same PCIe bus. So it's not the fastest way to connect a lot of drives. But you can easily create major league storage capacity this way. Just imagine having 256 16TB drives in there :D
 
SirDice said:
Just imagine having 256 16TB drives in there
Click to expand...
? O...M...G... (4 Petabytes?) ... let me calculate ... My good old Motherboard has 4 PCIe slots for the 9211-i8 ...

I take photos as a hobby ... should be enough for the rest of my life ? (and a lot longer...)

Thanks again for your answers! :-)
 
Yeah, I've yet to see a system with 256 disks though. But I'm not in the storage market, I'm sure some of our forum members have. Most I've had to deal with are 2U servers with 24 2.5" hot-swappable disk trays.
 
SirDice said:
Yeah, I've yet to see a system with 256 disks though. But I'm not in the storage market, I'm sure some of our forum members have. Most I've had to deal with are 2U servers with 24 2.5" hot-swappable disk trays.
Click to expand...
"Even" that would be interesting for me (small joke, I find it highly interesting!). I have to deal with 2 proxmox-hosts (1U) with a FreeNAS backend (with 8 disks) (2U) and a FreeNAS Backup with 8 disks.
We thought of making the proxmox-servers HA (with 3) etc. But for the sake of the DSGVO we transfered some of our VM's into a data-center and now I'm only responsible for a few linux/bsd vm's - mostly small WEB-servers. :'‑(
 
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