Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 00:19:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Don Lewis <truckman@FreeBSD.org> To: josh@tcbug.org Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: LSI 9240-4i 4K alignment Message-ID: <201208200719.q7K7JYqZ011355@gw.catspoiler.org> In-Reply-To: <5031A21D.3050102@tcbug.org>
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On 19 Aug, Josh Paetzel wrote: > On 08/19/2012 14:04, Steven Hartland wrote: >> HBA's are the way to go if your using ZFS to manage the disks, you only >> need RAID if your using a FS which doesn't manage the disk side well >> such as UFS. >> >> Its often quite common for RAID controllers to actually be slower >> vs RAID controllers as the RAID stack can get in the way. Any idea of what kind of performance penalty I might see by using the RAID firmware in JBOD mode vs flashing the IT firmware? > Just to clear up, > > The 9240 is a sas2008 based card with the megaraid software on top of > it. In it's default config from LSI the FreeBSD mfi will recognize it > in later versions of FreeBSD (The upcoming 9.1 for sure) Older > versions of mfi will not recognize it. > > The card can be flashed with IT firmware and then becomes a 9211 HBA, > but it's a bit more expensive than a 9211 is so that doesn't make sense > to do in many cases. The price difference was pretty minor when I looked. Confusingly enough, the 9211 HBA also has some RAID capabilities. For me, the biggest advantage of the 9211 would be that it would have allowed me to use shorter cables. > On the dmesg posted the firmware on the card is phase 11. This *must* > be in lockstep with the driver version or the card may not play nicely. > FreeBSD 8.3 and 9.0 have v13 of the driver, the upcoming 9.1 will have > v14. Note that v14 fixes a *ton* of stability bugs, including issues > where bad drives would hang the controller or prevent systems from booting. Where do those version numbers come from? The mfi driver in 9.0-RELEASE claims to be version 3.00 and the the driver in 9.1 claims to be version 4.23. This is what shows up in dmesg on my machine: mfi0: <Drake Skinny> port 0xce00-0xceff mem 0xfcefc000-0xfcefffff,0xfce80000-0xf cebffff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci1 mfi0: Using MSI mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 4.23 mfi0: 333 (398082533s/0x0020/info) - Shutdown command received from host mfi0: 334 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0073 /1000/9240/1000) mfi0: 335 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 2.70.04-0862 mfi0: 336 (boot + 5s/0x0020/info) - Board Revision 04A mfi0: 337 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0073 /1000/9240/1000) mfi0: 338 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 2.70.04-0862 mfi0: 339 (boot + 5s/0x0020/info) - Board Revision 04A mfi0: 340 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0073 /1000/9240/1000) mfi0: 341 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 2.70.04-0862 mfi0: 342 (boot + 5s/0x0020/info) - Board Revision 04A mfi0: 343 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0073 /1000/9240/1000) mfi0: 344 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 2.70.04-0862 mfi0: 345 (boot + 5s/0x0020/info) - Board Revision 04A mfi0: 346 (398759025s/0x0020/info) - Time established as 08/20/12 6:23:45; (25 seconds since power on) mfi0: 347 (398759051s/0x0020/info) - Time established as 08/20/12 6:24:11; (51 seconds since power on) mfi0: 348 (398759078s/0x0020/WARN) - Patrol Read can't be started, as PDs are ei ther not ONLINE, or are in a VD with an active process, or are in an excluded VD % mfiutil show firmware mfi0 Firmware Package Version: 20.5.1-0003 mfi0 Firmware Images: Name Version Date Time Status BIOS 4.14.00 active PCLI 03.02-001:#%00008 Feb 09 2010 13:09:06 active BCON 4.0-22-e_10-Rel Mar 11 2010 12:38:08 active NVDT 3.04.03-0002 Apr 05 2010 18:50:27 active APP 2.70.04-0862 May 05 2010 18:12:07 active BTBL 2.01.00.00-0019 May 14 2009 15:52:08 active The only firmware file on LSI's web site for the 9240-8i is version 20.10.1-107, which appears to be newer than what is on the card if the 20.5.1-0003 is the version number that I should be looking at. Is the BIOS Version 4.14 the v14 version that you mention above? If the FreeBSD mfi driver expects a certain firmware version, shouldn't it complain if it doesn't find it?
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