9300-8i vs 9207-8i

[ZeroOne]

Any drawbacks to using the 9300-8i at this point compared to the 9207-8i? It's been out for a while, but haven't seen much on it as far as stability and maturity, compared to the 9207-8i.

Won't really be taking advantage of the SAS 12Gbps, but since the prices are almost the same, why not go with the newer? If it's stable that is. Didn't want to run into any hidden issues.

(For reference, this will be used as pass-thru in ESXi for a napp-it / OI or OmniOS build.)

Thanks!

 

[Aluminum]

Any drawbacks to using the 9300-8i at this point compared to the 9207-8i? It's been out for a while, but haven't seen much on it as far as stability and maturity, compared to the 9207-8i.

Won't really be taking advantage of the SAS 12Gbps, but since the prices are almost the same, why not go with the newer? If it's stable that is. Didn't want to run into any hidden issues.

(For reference, this will be used as pass-thru in ESXi for a napp-it / OI or OmniOS build.)

Thanks!

Availability of current/stable drivers in your OS version of choice would be the only thing I would worry about. If those are there, no brainer for me.

 

[dswallow]

I'm in the process of doing just this with a 9300-8i (+ SuperMicro X9DRi-F, (1) E5-2620v2 CPU, 32GB RAM, Chenbro CK23601 36-port SAS Expander). I just got everything built a few days ago. The napp-it VM package doesn't seem to have drivers for the SAS3008 chipset. I also tried the 9.2.1 beta FreeNAS build and it has a driver, though it's a "beta build"... and from what I've seen so far, I'd call it a pre-alpha build. The controller isn't visible in any way via the UI, nor are any disks. But you do see text written all over the screen when you unplug and move a disk around to a different position... messages about not finding an enclosure, but it does show the disk. But the UI is oblivious to it all and never sees the disk.

Of course, I can't completely rule out some of these issues are because of my attempt to start off under VMware and using the virtualization/pass through for the PCI card. I'll probably try FreeNAS directly and see if there's any different behavior as some sign it's a VMware-caused issue.

I haven't really been able to devote a lot of time to it yet, but as an out-of-box experience it definitely is not ready yet (I guess my post here is the beginning of my attempts in a roundabout way!). That alone might be good reason to just go with a 9207-8i or other SAS2308-based HBA. I've been hoping to find anybody anywhere doing something with the 9300-8i/SAS3008, and I've found practically nothing so far beyond your message here, the one sentence mention about it in FreeNAS 9.2.1 beta, some very vague references if you hunt for the "mpt3sas" driver name, and this russian brochure mentioning Illumos support and contacting Nexnta (http://www.trinitygroup.ru/events/lsi2013.pdf). I'm also just considering using Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces and being done with it.

 

[ZeroOne]

Lol.... I have to laugh... just googled an issue, since I did get the cards, and found this original post. Exact same problems here.

Passing the device through to OmniOS / napp-it-13b results in the same. It appears there is no driver. Nothing is visible within the napp-it web interface (drives or controller, unable to initialize anything)
(2x 9300-8i, P9D-E/4L, E3-1245v3, 32GB RAM)

Passing the device through to a working Win8 VM results in it (the VM) crashing at boot with error in ESXi:
"VMware ESX unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0) PCIPassthru: 01:00.0 tried to modify MSI-X vectors number 32-32, but maximum supported vector number is 31"

(note the vcpu-# changes sometimes, tried many times.)


Original plan was to have each OS (OmniOS / napp-it, and win8) have their own card, passed through, for both all-in-one, and for testing storage spaces in it's own environment.

I'm now at a bare-metal install of win8, and am contemplating using Storage Spaces alone, as well. The whole point of this was to make it very simple and reliable. No doubt this can be a great setup, but there's always issues with the newest hardware and drivers. My requirements are only redundancy and protection as far as the real data goes. Not much volume of data though. That said, I think Storage Spaces can be reliable for simple mirroring and ReFS, despite some of the other teething issues it's had.

Will play with ESXi still, but the whole stability with passthru thing has me concerned for now.

EDIT to add:
Looks like we're not the only ones seeing this issue:
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/447255

 

[ZeroOne]

Found a fix for the Windows VM anyway... Can boot now with access to the card. Stability testing to come, as I'm not sure really what effect this change will have on the hardware.

Here's the info (edited from link, to update for ESXi 5.5, since the link instructions differed slightly):

From the vSphere Client:

Right-click the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
Click the Options.
Click General.
Click Configuration Parameters...
Click Add Row.
Add the parameter to the new row:
In the Name column, add pciPassthru0.maxMSIXvectors.
In the Value column, add 31.
Click OK and click OK again.

Link:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2032981

 

[dswallow]

I ordered an LSI 9207-8i to use instead, for now. Maybe I'll set up a second VM with Windows 2012 and pass thru the 9300-8i to it.