Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 11:56:23 +0000 From: Tom Evans <tevans.uk@googlemail.com> To: Borja Marcos <borjam@sarenet.es> Cc: "freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.org" <freebsd-fs@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Controller for ZFS Message-ID: <CAFHbX1J3zO44-KC=Os0bu=wBNoatm3LqUS3fSPjAbzh2OaxRWQ@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <49F719A9-AC50-4917-8809-F51EBD4F5D0F@sarenet.es> References: <CEA907F4.12261%shawn.wallbridge@imaginaryforces.com> <49F719A9-AC50-4917-8809-F51EBD4F5D0F@sarenet.es>
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On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 10:49 AM, Borja Marcos <borjam@sarenet.es> wrote: > The one I use is sold by Dell as the "H200". They usually try to disuade you by saying that it's not intelligent, doesn't > offer RAID, some of their "configuration aids" even forbid it... I just tell the salesman to shut up because I know much better than him. The one I use was labelled as "Dell 6GB SAS HBA" (I got it from ebay, ~$100) with 2 external mini-SAS connectors. This could then be flashed with LSI's own firmware to 9211-8i-IT firmware (it doesn't seem to care how the ports are configured). These are then hooked up to a couple of 16 bay enclosures with SAS expanders. This then gives you the perfect ZFS HBA, no more configuration required. Each drive attached appears as /dev/daN. (One warning, if your system is EFI, then LSI's DOS, linux and FreeBSD based flash utils will not work, you'll get a message about "Failed to initialise PAL". Put the card in a BIOS based system, or (much harder) boot an EFI shell and use LSI's EFI utils instead) > > The only problem: beware if you are using a built-in backplane in the server, some manufacturers insist on using different > cabling schemes for different controllers and you could run into stupid problems because of that. > > FreeBSD 10 identifies one of my cards as this one: > mps0: <LSI SAS2008> port 0x7c00-0x7cff mem 0xd4ff0000-0xd4ffffff,0xd4f80000-0xd4fbffff irq 80 at device 0.0 on pci67 > mps0: Firmware: 07.15.08.00, Driver: 16.00.00.00-fbsd This is quite old firmware, do you not have problems with this (particularly large drives or SSDs)? I believe I am using 15, and the latest is 16. Cheers Tom
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