Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 12 Jan 2015 17:30:58 -0500
From:      Mike Tancsa <mike@sentex.net>
To:        "freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org" <freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org>
Subject:   mfi vs mps vs firmware images
Message-ID:  <54B44B22.2020706@sentex.net>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I have been using a pair of LSI branded 9420-8si cards in my backup 
server on RELENG_10 since November 2014 (firmware from Oct 2014 off the 
LSI site) and so far so good. However, a number of other users have 
warned me not to use the mfi driver, and stick with the MPS driver and 
some older versions of the firmware aimed at an IBM m1015.  I use the 
cards for zfs and to expose the disks individually through cam with the 
mfip module and so far so good.
However, folks over on the FreeNAS forum are convinced I am flirting 
with data loss using the supposed disastrous mfi driver/firmware combo. 
  Can anyone shed light  on the state of these cards and how best to use 
them ? I havent really seen anything on the FreeBSD lists in the past 
year indicating serious issues, but then again, I only started using 
these cards since Novmeber of last year.

I do zfs scrubs every month and they have yet to show errors on my 32TB 
pool. (a number of raidz2s)


# mfiutil show adapter
mfi0 Adapter:
     Product Name: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-8i
    Serial Number: SP34906493
         Firmware: 20.13.1-0208
      RAID Levels: JBOD, RAID0, RAID1, RAID10
   Battery Backup: not present
            NVRAM: 32K
   Onboard Memory: 0M
   Minimum Stripe: 8K
   Maximum Stripe: 64K
# mfiutil show firmware
mfi0 Firmware Package Version: 20.13.1-0208
mfi0 Firmware Images:
Name  Version                          Date         Time         Status
BIOS  4.38.02.2_4.16.08.00_0x06060A05  07/23/2014
   07/23/2014
   active
PCLI  03.02-020:#%00009                May 07 2012  13:21:53     active
BCON  4.0-61-e_50-Rel                  Sep 09 2014  11:45:57     active
NVDT  3.09.03-0064                     Oct 06 2014  12:00:15     active
APP   2.130.404-3836                   Oct 16 2014  06:50:12     active
BTBL  2.02.00.00-0001                  Aug 18 2010  11:44:44     active
# mfiutil show drives
mfi0 Physical Drives:
  8 ( 3726G) JBOD              <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80 
serial=WD-WCC4E0911515> SATA E1:S1
  9 ( 3726G) JBOD              <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A82 
serial=WD-WCC4E9Y80F79> SATA E1:S0
10 ( 3726G) JBOD              <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80 
serial=WD-WCC4E0916074> SATA E1:S3
11 ( 3726G) JBOD              <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80 
serial=WD-WCC4E0893433> SATA E1:S2
13 ( 3726G) JBOD              <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A82 
serial=WD-WCC4E9Y80J8A> SATA E1:S5

mfi0: <Drake Skinny> port 0x6000-0x60ff mem 
0xb1460000-0xb1463fff,0xb1400000-0xb143ffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
mfi0: Using MSI
mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 4.23
mfip0: <SCSI Passthrough Bus> on mfi0

}# pciconf -lvcb mfi0
mfi0@pci0:1:0:0:        class=0x010400 card=0x92401000 chip=0x00731000 
rev=0x03 hdr=0x00
     vendor     = 'LSI Logic / Symbios Logic'
     device     = 'MegaRAID SAS 2008 [Falcon]'
     class      = mass storage
     subclass   = RAID
     bar   [10] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x6000, size 256, enabled
     bar   [14] = type Memory, range 64, base 0xb1460000, size 16384, 
enabled
     bar   [1c] = type Memory, range 64, base 0xb1400000, size 262144, 
enabled
     cap 01[50] = powerspec 3  supports D0 D1 D2 D3  current D0
     cap 10[68] = PCI-Express 2 endpoint max data 256(4096) FLR link x2(x8)
                  speed 5.0(5.0) ASPM disabled(L0s)
     cap 03[d0] = VPD
     cap 05[a8] = MSI supports 1 message, 64 bit enabled with 1 message
     cap 11[c0] = MSI-X supports 15 messages
                  Table in map 0x14[0x2000], PBA in map 0x14[0x3800]
     ecap 0001[100] = AER 1 1 fatal 0 non-fatal 0 corrected
     ecap 0004[138] = Power Budgeting 1


Box is running 10.1-STABLE FreeBSD 10.1-STABLE #10 r275939 AMD64

	---Mike

-- 
-------------------
Mike Tancsa, tel +1 519 651 3400
Sentex Communications, mike@sentex.net
Providing Internet services since 1994 www.sentex.net
Cambridge, Ontario Canada   http://www.tancsa.com/



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?54B44B22.2020706>