Enabling fastpath on 9260-8i

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metag

Member
Apr 26, 2016
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Search for LSI00292. It is a hardware key that enables both fastpath and cachecade.
 

metag

Member
Apr 26, 2016
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8
Sorry I did not click on that. Yes, install it on the card then fastpath and cachecade should be enabled permanently. There is no need to enter any key that way.
 

metag

Member
Apr 26, 2016
64
16
8
30+30+30....day trial key, you can renew till the cows come home
Then when you forget to enter the key within 30 days, the cows will be gone. Just kidding. They are still there. But when it happened, I sweated quite a bit because the drives were not accessible until the key was entered.
 

mobilenvidia

Moderator
Sep 25, 2011
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Then when you forget to enter the key within 30 days, the cows will be gone. Just kidding. They are still there. But when it happened, I sweated quite a bit because the drives were not accessible until the key was entered.
You can setup a script to do it via command line, everytime you boot or every day, week, month etc
 

mobilenvidia

Moderator
Sep 25, 2011
1,956
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New Zealand
Activating Key with MegaCLI

Use this example commands:
For LSISAS2108 based controllers:
megacli elf applykey key TIKGE5K73QX4EH7U5AT91URDQUNL9NXLVTTER72Z -a0
or
storcli elf applykey key TIKGE5K73QX4EH7U5AT91URDQUNL9NXLVTTER72Z -a0

For LSISAS2208 based controllers:
megacli elf applykey key IQ3TCNMDM6DCXGQ24J1IWR56FX2RAGWES7T822AZ -a0
or
storcli elf applykey key IQ3TCNMDM6DCXGQ24J1IWR56FX2RAGWES7T822AZ -a0

For LSISAS3108 based controllers:

megacli elf applykey key JEFU1LSNSKC8L2PNP5IV567EKASKNXIAF4VN8VRZ -a0
or
storcli elf applykey key JEFU1LSNSKC8L2PNP5IV567EKASKNXIAF4VN8VRZ -a0
 

vladimir.mijatovic

New Member
Jan 12, 2019
27
15
3
@mobilenvidia Thank you for these instructions.
Currently, I have a LSI 9270CV-8i with 4xHDD in RAID 10 mode (worked pretty well for couple of years)

It is a LSISAS2208 controller and even though it is a Dell's card, key IQ3TCNMDM6DCXGQ24J1IWR56FX2RAGWES7T822AZ trial works without problems.
But MegaCli.exe does not seem to recognize the card on Windows 10 so I could not use MegaCli.exe with commandprompt (in Administrator mode). I had to set CacheCade (on Intel 3700 80GB) via MegaRaid Storage manager.
If somebody has any advice about this, I will be glad to try it.

I will test 2 things and report about it in a case there are others interested:
- if I can prolong trial via MegaRaid Storage manager on Win10 and if it adds 30 days again
- in couple of days I plan to switch this workstation to Linux - if I probably will be able to use
megacli elf applykey key IQ3TCNMDM6DCXGQ24J1IWR56FX2RAGWES7T822AZ -a0
or
storcli elf applykey key IQ3TCNMDM6DCXGQ24J1IWR56FX2RAGWES7T822AZ -a0
This looks like a precondition if this card will stay running instead of a ZFS on proxmox setup.

LSI9260 and lower seem like obsolete choices to me, but 2208 controller with cachecade might still be relevant in a case where you do not want to dedicate lots of RAM to ZFS or on a windows machine for a 4-6x HDD + 2x SSD for cachecade.
Until recently H310 mini seemed like a yellow-brick and so I bought H710p. On Dell R620/720 it has CacheCade (read) enabled by default, so I am considering having LSI9270 and H710p run on separate machines, but for similar workloads.
 

vladimir.mijatovic

New Member
Jan 12, 2019
27
15
3
Update for Windows 10:
If you have MegaRaid Storage manager installed on WIN 10, you can CMD (as administrator)
Code:
C:\Program Files (x86)\MegaRAID Storage Manager>storcli -AdpAllInfo -aALL
Adapter #0

==============================================================================
 Versions
 ================
Product Name    : LSI MegaRAID SAS 9270CV-8i
Serial No       : SV31118846
FW Package Build: 23.34.0-0019
...
PFK TrailTime Remaining         : 28 days 16 hours
Then I tried to prolong trial period and even without reboot-ing it seems that card applied new 30 days for trial.
I will probably not use the machine for 30 days without reboot-ing to see if reboot really is required.
Code:
C:\Program Files (x86)\MegaRAID Storage Manager>storcli elf applykey key IQ3TCNMDM6DCXGQ24J1IWR56FX2RAGWES7T822AZ -a0
Successfully applied the Activation key. Please restart the system for the changes to take effect.

Exit Code: 0x00
I tried to see Controller info without reboot-ing and Key/new 30 day trial seems to be already successfuly applied

Code:
C:\Program Files (x86)\MegaRAID Storage Manager>storcli -AdpAllInfo -aALL
...
PFK TrailTime Remaining         : 29 days 23 hours
So it looks this could be a script that you run on Windows "calendar" :) or a cron/on_reboot .sh script on Linux.


A card like this with 1GB write back cache, BBU, solid RoC performance and up to 512GB of read SSD CacheCade for app. $100-150 still seems to have some value and could be an alternative to ZFS. Major caveat is the lack of "GUI" like FreeNAS or at least more sensible shell commands like ZFS. It boggles my mind that such a major player and engeneering power like LSI basically vanished in 2-3y due to the rise of SWF RAID and lack of a nice GUI/UX.
 

Allan74

Member
May 15, 2019
132
13
18
I have been using a couple of MegaRaid 9261-8i cards since about 2013 in a couple of smaller home servers and am about to employ a SAS expander to get a bit more out of the setup and would love to add Cachecade to help. Would the above work for my cards as well ? I believe they are 6GB SAS2108 cards with 512MB cache.
 

EasyRhino

Well-Known Member
Aug 6, 2019
499
370
63
it took me a while but I just realized that these keys for these products don't change over time, (or at least haven't changed in7 months) which should make scriping much easier. thanks!