I planned to purchase a 9211-8i IT for a current project, but then was given a 9264-8i free of charge, so I thought I give that a try.
When I turn the computer on, this is how the adapter is shown up amongst the P.O.S.T. messages.
Pressing Ctrl+H there did not have any visible effect.
I have also seen a "Press C to configure", and following that a "press Y for yes" confirmation, but those did not bring up the expected configuration interface either.
After an
The relevant part of a
And then playing around with the adapter and a pair of 1TB SATA SSDs.
After that, the relevant portion from my DMESG is below.
So, it appears that I could get it to work without any difficulty. Although, it seems a bit cumbersome to use the utility tool of the RAID adapter to tell it to create a virtual drive of a single phisical drive in order for the Operating System to see it, enabling me to create a zfs RAID out of it.
My plan was to use 6 or 8 noname cheap chinese SSDs of 1TB capacity to construct a zraid2 or zraid3, and use that as a small office file storage. I generally don't expect these noname SSDs to be fast or very reliable. But I hope to get a decent performance and reliability out of the constructed zraid.
Do you have any experience with this LSI MegaRAID SAS 9264-8i or a similar mfi(4) adapter?
Is this all right for my intended use? Or should I avoid this kind of zraid construction and go for a 9211-8i with IT firmware instead? How do these two compare?
I also looked for the possibility of a firmware upgrade, but got confused. The Broadcom downloads page listed all kinds of legacy firmware, without showing WHICH adapter they belong to. Often I found more than one download with the same version number, same release date, obviously for different adapters, but the only way to figure out the name/type of the adapter was in the file name, after I downloaded them.
Also, I found no trace of a 9264 adapter, but I found downloads for 9260, 9261, and 9265.
Any clarification on those is also very welcome.
When I turn the computer on, this is how the adapter is shown up amongst the P.O.S.T. messages.
Code:
LSI MegaRAID SAS-MFI BIOS
Version 3.09.00 (Build August 27, 2009)
Copyright (c) 2009 LSI Corporation
HA -0 (Bus 2 Dev 0) LSI MegaRAID SAS 9264-8i
FW package: 12.0.1-0102
...irrelevant garbage here about devices missing from previous configuration...
Press <Ctrl><H> for WebBIOS _
Pressing Ctrl+H there did not have any visible effect.
I have also seen a "Press C to configure", and following that a "press Y for yes" confirmation, but those did not bring up the expected configuration interface either.
After an
mfiutil clear
command under FreeBSD, the irrelevant garbage was displayed no more. Nor was the "Press C to configure" message ever seen again.The relevant part of a
pciconf -lv
output is this.
Code:
mfi0@pci0:2:0:0: class=0x010400 rev=0x05 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x1000 device=0x0079 subvendor=0x1000 subdevice=0x9264
vendor = 'Broadcom / LSI'
device = 'MegaRAID SAS 2108 [Liberator]'
class = mass storage
subclass = RAID
And then playing around with the adapter and a pair of 1TB SATA SSDs.
Code:
root@ede800g1:~ # freebsd-version -ku
13.1-RELEASE-p2
13.1-RELEASE-p2
root@ede800g1:~ # mfiutil version
mfiutil version 1.0.15
root@ede800g1:~ # mfiutil show adapter
mfi0 Adapter:
Product Name: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9264-8i
Serial Number: SV20119474
Firmware: 12.0.1-0102
RAID Levels: JBOD, RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID6, RAID10, RAID50
Battery Backup: not present
NVRAM: 32K
Onboard Memory: 256M
Minimum Stripe: 8K
Maximum Stripe: 1M
root@ede800g1:~ # mfiutil show battery
mfi0: No battery present
root@ede800g1:~ # mfiutil show firmware
mfi0 Firmware Package Version: 12.0.1-0102
mfi0 Firmware Images:
Name Version Date Time Status
BIOS 3.09.00 active
APP 2.0.83-1327 Jul 28 2011 14:33:20 active
PCLI 02.00-015:#%00008 Oct 30 2009 13:31:45 active
BCON 3.0-22-e_12-Rel Nov 20 2009 16:36:07 active
NVDT 2.02.0043 Jun 09 2010 13:32:09 active
BTBL 2.00.00.00-0018 Apr 17 2009 13:09:17 active
BOOT 01.250.04.219 4/28/2009 12:51:38 active
root@ede800g1:~ # mfiutil show drives
mfi0 Physical Drives:
2 ( 932G) ONLINE <1TB 1c70 serial=1248> SATA E1:S2
5 ( 932G) ONLINE <1TB 1c70 serial=1727> SATA E1:S5
root@ede800g1:~ # mfiutil create jbod E1:S2
root@ede800g1:~ # mfiutil create jbod E1:S5
root@ede800g1:~ # mfiutil show volumes
mfi0 Volumes:
Id Size Level Stripe State Cache Name
mfid0 ( 931G) RAID-0 64K OPTIMAL Writes
mfid1 ( 931G) RAID-0 64K OPTIMAL Writes
root@ede800g1:~ # mfiutil show config
mfi0 Configuration: 2 arrays, 2 volumes, 0 spares
array 0 of 1 drives:
drive 2 ( 932G) ONLINE <1TB 1c70 serial=1248> SATA
array 1 of 1 drives:
drive 5 ( 932G) ONLINE <1TB 1c70 serial=1727> SATA
volume mfid0 (931G) RAID-0 64K OPTIMAL spans:
array 0
volume mfid1 (931G) RAID-0 64K OPTIMAL spans:
array 1
After that, the relevant portion from my DMESG is below.
Code:
mfi0: <LSI MegaSAS Gen2> port 0xe000-0xe0ff mem 0xf7c80000-0xf7c83fff,0xf7c40000-0xf7c7ffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci2
mfi0: Using MSI
mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 4.23
mfi0: FW MaxCmds = 1008, limiting to 128
mfi0: 8760 (718759164s/0x0020/info) - Shutdown command received from host
mfi0: 8761 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0079/1000/9264/1000)
mfi0: 8762 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 2.0.83-1327
mfi0: 8763 (boot + 11s/0x0020/info) - Board Revision 62A
mfi0: 8764 (boot + 29s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 02(e0xff/s2)
ehci1: <Intel Lynx Point USB 2.0 controller USB-A> mem 0xf7d3b000-0xf7d3b3ff irq 23 at device 29.0 on pci0
mfi0: 8765 (boot + 29s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 02(e0xff/s2) Info: enclPd=ffff, scsiType=0, portMap=00, sasAddr=4433221101000000,0000000000000000
usbus2: EHCI version 1.0
mfi0: 8766 (boot + 29s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 05(e0xff/s5)
mfi0: 8767 (boot + 29s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 05(e0xff/s5) Info: enclPd=ffff, scsiType=0, portMap=01, sasAddr=4433221105000000,0000000000000000
mfi0: 8768 (boot + 29s/0x0001/info) - Policy change on VD 00/0 to [ID=00,dcp=21,ccp=20,ap=0,dc=0,dbgi=0] from [ID=00,dcp=21,ccp=21,ap=0,dc=0,dbgi=0]
mfi0: 8769 (boot + 29s/0x0001/info) - Policy change on VD 01/1 to [ID=01,dcp=21,ccp=20,ap=0,dc=0,dbgi=0] from [ID=01,dcp=21,ccp=21,ap=0,dc=0,dbgi=0]
mfi0: 8770 (718827537s/0x0020/info) - Time established as 10/11/22 18:18:57; (36 seconds since power on)
...
mfid0 on mfi0
mfid0: 953344MB (1952448512 sectors) RAID volume (no label) is optimal
GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (mfid0, MBR)
mfid1 on mfi0
mfid1: 953344MB (1952448512 sectors) RAID volume (no label) is optimal
GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (mfid1, MBR)
So, it appears that I could get it to work without any difficulty. Although, it seems a bit cumbersome to use the utility tool of the RAID adapter to tell it to create a virtual drive of a single phisical drive in order for the Operating System to see it, enabling me to create a zfs RAID out of it.
My plan was to use 6 or 8 noname cheap chinese SSDs of 1TB capacity to construct a zraid2 or zraid3, and use that as a small office file storage. I generally don't expect these noname SSDs to be fast or very reliable. But I hope to get a decent performance and reliability out of the constructed zraid.
Do you have any experience with this LSI MegaRAID SAS 9264-8i or a similar mfi(4) adapter?
Is this all right for my intended use? Or should I avoid this kind of zraid construction and go for a 9211-8i with IT firmware instead? How do these two compare?
I also looked for the possibility of a firmware upgrade, but got confused. The Broadcom downloads page listed all kinds of legacy firmware, without showing WHICH adapter they belong to. Often I found more than one download with the same version number, same release date, obviously for different adapters, but the only way to figure out the name/type of the adapter was in the file name, after I downloaded them.
Also, I found no trace of a 9264 adapter, but I found downloads for 9260, 9261, and 9265.
Any clarification on those is also very welcome.