Solved Switch from mfi(4) to mrsas(4) on a fully installed system.

[arnov]

I installed a FreeBSD 10.x on a system with a Dell H710 mini controller some years ago, and configured the card to use each SATA disk as a separate volume. I then used all four disks to create a bootable raidz1 zpool.
The disks are shown as mfid<x>.
Meanwhile I have upgraded to FreeBSD 11.x and recently to FreeBSD 13.0 and learned that this is not the optimal way to use raidz on this card, and that switching to mrsas(4) is the best way when installing a new system.

Can I also do this on an already installed and used system? And, if yes, should I update the firmware to the latest version on this card before doing this?

Thank you.

 

[SirDice]

Can I also do this on an already installed and used system?

Yes, you can. But you need to prepare for some boot issues initially. So make sure you have console access when you make the switch. You might have some minor issues when the drives change their nomination, from mfid0 to da0. ZFS should pick this up without problems but you need to be prepared for a having to nudge the system in the right direction. You might also need to modify /etc/fstab for your swap.

And, if yes, should I update the firmware to the latest version on this card before doing this?

Depends on how old the current firmware is and if you're having any of the issues that are solved by the updated firmware. Make sure you backup the current firmware so you have a way back to a 'known good' firmware.

 

[sko]

If you are booting via UEFI and have used efi-labels e.g. for swap, usually you can swap out controllers/drivers and everything 'just works'™ Otherwise prepare for the small adjustments SirDice already mentioned.


Regarding the H710 mini controller: it can be flashed to standard LSI IT mode firmware [1], but given that it's "vanilla" counterpart, the SAS9200-8i is selling as new part for ~70$ nowadays and even the newer 9300-8i is available starting at only ~110$ I wouldn't try messing around with firmware crossflashing. Yes, it usually works and I also reflashed a lot of Dell and HP HBAs over the years, but every now and then you get some slightly off card/chipset variant or firmware version and end up with a bricked HBA (I still have 3 or 4 SAS9200 lying around that refuse to POST...).
The "brown box" HBAs from China are perfectly fine for a home server - I've been/am using various 9200, 9300 and 9400 variants at home for years and we even run them in some test or backup systems and never had any issues or failures.


[1] https://fohdeesha.com/docs/H710P-D1/