ASA-80165H (PM8072) SAS Controller Drivers

[IrY100Fan]

I have two Microsemi ASA-80165H SAS controllers. I cannot get either of them to work under Ubuntu Linux 12.04/14.04/22.04 or Windows 7. Neither card shows the BIOS OpROM during POST. Both cards show up in Linux as "Serial Attached SCSI controller: PMC-Sierra Inc. PM8072 Tachyon SPCv 12G 16-port SAS/SATA controller (rev 06)" and as "SAS Controller" under Windows 7. I found what I thought are drivers for the card on Microchips website but the Linux drivers fail to compile during installation and the WIndows drivers claim to not be for this card.

Anyone have experience with this card?

Thanks.

 

[Stephan]

Card is widely recognized as sjit, no es bueno. Dropped drives after days, kernel panics, compilation problems as you already seen, driver not upstreamed. NetApp may have jinxed their driver well enough so it works, but kept the details to themselves. Same with I bet 500 errata with various firmware versions which you will never figure out.

Since LSI is working and cheapish, why bother, say the open source people, if even Microchip as the owners don't. If your time is worth anything, get an LSI and for the nasty lowest level bits, I can recommend lsiutil. Make sure to cool the card, a 80mm fan at 800rpm should be enough. There's a bunch of free clip-on fan holders you can 3D print if you don't want to bolt a fan onto the heatsink. Cards are old by now, might replace dried out thermal grease with a fresh tiny blob.

 

[IrY100Fan]

Hi Stephan,
Thanks for the reply.

That's disappointing news about my ASA-80165 cards. Finding an 12G LSI card with quad external SFF ports is not easy and not cheap so I was really hoping I'd be able to use these Microsemi/Adaptec cards.

Appreciate the tips on cooling. I am actually using a short-depth rack-mount case for the controller head which has good airflow. Cooling hasn't been a problem so far.

Time to do some searching for affordable LSI cards.

Again, thanks for the info.

 

[IrY100Fan]

Would a Broadcom 9400-16e card be a good alternative?

 

[Stephan]

Or maybe a Dell 0VYM4. Why do you need quad external SAS? Don't buy a chinese knock-off, try to get one that says Avago, Broadcom, Dell, IBM, LSI etc. on the PCB. The more white sticky labels, the better.

 

[IrY100Fan]

I will look into the Dell 0VYM4.

The reasoning behind the quad external ports is that I am building the system to have a separate chassis for the compute unit and two disk shelves. One shelf with 8x 20TB spinning rust (20 total bays) and another one with 24x SSDs (42 total bays). In testing I have found having 8 channels between my Adaptec SAS expander and the controller made a noticeable difference with the SSDs over 10G networking.

I found a new/unopened 9400-16e for about $112. I will try and find out if it is the real deal or not.

Thanks for all of your assistance.

 

[IrY100Fan]

Quick update...

I Received the Broadcom 9400-16e card. At first I thought it was broken as it didn't see any of the drives connected to it. Then I connected a SATA drive to it and that worked. My thought then was "what did I just receive". Turns out this card is unhappy with my SAS drives when 3.3V is available through the power connector on the drives. I had to remove the 3.3V (leaving only the 12V and 5V lines) and then all of my SAS drives started working. (Weird.)

The card seems to work well so far and barely gets warm with no fan - stays absolutely cold with a little airflow. (The low power draw of the 9400-16e was one of it's selling points to me.)

Thanks for all the help.

 

[Stephan]

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/collateral/tech-brief/tech-brief-western-digital-power-disable-pin.pdf

It's called PWDIS and actually is an enterprisey feature but you have to be aware of which disks you have use it and what your backplanes or connectors do with it. If you have many drives it is better to have staggered spin-up to not overload the power supply when 24 disks try to spin up their motors all at once. Otherwise you need a beefy PSU that is twiddling its thumbs all the time, except for 50 ms after power-good when current rushes into the motors.

 

[IrY100Fan]

Interesting read. I always assumed the only way to reset a drive was to either remove all power or send a reset command over the bus.

Funny how this problem only showed up with this new controller (9400-16e) but when I use an old controller (9212-4i4e) the problem doesn't occur. Seems like this would be entirely dependent on the 3.3V pin and not the controller. Oh well.

Probably not going to be an issue in the end. My JBOD case is DIY. It's basically just a bunch of 5.25"-to-3.5" and 5.25"-to-2.5" drive bays and they all just use the 4-pin Molex connector so no 3.5V is available to the drives. I will program the 9400-16e for staggered spinup. (Probably not a big issue as I don't have too many mechanical drives right now and SSDs don't have near the inrush power requirements.)

Thanks for the info.

 

[nthu9280]

Interesting read. I always assumed the only way to reset a drive was to either remove all power or send a reset command over the bus.

Funny how this problem only showed up with this new controller (9400-16e) but when I use an old controller (9212-4i4e) the problem doesn't occur. Seems like this would be entirely dependent on the 3.3V pin and not the controller. Oh well.

Thanks for the info.

If you use the 4 pin Molex -> SATA Power, this issue does not come into picture. I'm guessing when you first connected the drives, SFF-8644 to SAS, you used SATA Power connector which supplies 3.3v.

Btw, It's been a while but I tried the internal version and gave-up.

ASA-81605H

 

[Dave Corder]

I have one of these on the way, not for any actual usage, but mainly so I can use the arcconf to probe and change some parameters on an Adaptec 82885T SAS expander. Should be here tomorrow (though tracking hasn't been updated at all for two days, so who knows).

What's the output of lspci -vvv for the card?

 

[IrY100Fan]

Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but I think the 82885T is just a SAS expander and the PCIe connector is for power only. Aren't all comms for configuring the card done though the SAS bus?

I plugged my 82885T into my Linux Mint 21 machine and it doesn't see anything with the lspci command.

 

[Dave Corder]

Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, but I think the 82885T is just a SAS expander and the PCIe connector is for power only. Aren't all comms for configuring the card done though the SAS bus?

I plugged my 82885T into my Linux Mint 21 machine and it doesn't see anything with the lspci command.

Yes, the expander is not a PCIe device and just uses the slot for power.

I want to use arcconf to tweak some settings on the expander itself (long story), but it won't work if the expander is connected to a non-Adaptec controller. So I ordered an ASA-80165H because it was the cheapest Adaptec controller I found, but it's sounding like I may have some difficulty getting Linux drivers working for it so I can use arcconf on the expander.

 

[IrY100Fan]

My apologies, I misunderstood the game plan.

Here is the output of lspci -vvv for one of the ASA-80165h I have.

01:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: PMC-Sierra Inc. PM8072 Tachyon SPCv 12G 16-port SAS/SATA controller (rev 06)
    Subsystem: PMC-Sierra Inc. PM8072 Tachyon SPCv 12G 16-port SAS/SATA controller
    Control: I/O- Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
    Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
    Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 255
    IOMMU group: 71
    Region 0: Memory at fd910000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=64K]
    Region 2: Memory at fd900000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=64K]
    Expansion ROM at fd800000 [disabled] [size=1M]
    Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 3
        Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0+,D1+,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold-)
        Status: D0 NoSoftRst+ PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
    Capabilities: [88] Vital Product Data
pcilib: sysfs_read_vpd: read failed: No such device
        Not readable
    Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable- Count=1/32 Maskable+ 64bit+
        Address: 0000000000000000  Data: 0000
        Masking: 00000000  Pending: 00000000
    Capabilities: [b0] MSI-X: Enable- Count=64 Masked-
        Vector table: BAR=0 offset=00000400
        PBA: BAR=0 offset=00000800
    Capabilities: [c0] Express (v2) Endpoint, MSI 00
        DevCap:    MaxPayload 512 bytes, PhantFunc 0, Latency L0s <4us, L1 <1us
            ExtTag+ AttnBtn- AttnInd- PwrInd- RBE+ FLReset- SlotPowerLimit 0W
        DevCtl:    CorrErr+ NonFatalErr+ FatalErr+ UnsupReq-
            RlxdOrd+ ExtTag+ PhantFunc- AuxPwr- NoSnoop+
            MaxPayload 512 bytes, MaxReadReq 512 bytes
        DevSta:    CorrErr+ NonFatalErr- FatalErr- UnsupReq+ AuxPwr- TransPend-
        LnkCap:    Port #0, Speed 8GT/s, Width x8, ASPM not supported
            ClockPM- Surprise- LLActRep- BwNot- ASPMOptComp+
        LnkCtl:    ASPM Disabled; RCB 64 bytes, Disabled- CommClk-
            ExtSynch- ClockPM- AutWidDis- BWInt- AutBWInt-
        LnkSta:    Speed 8GT/s, Width x8
            TrErr- Train- SlotClk- DLActive- BWMgmt- ABWMgmt-
        DevCap2: Completion Timeout: Range B, TimeoutDis+ NROPrPrP- LTR-
             10BitTagComp- 10BitTagReq- OBFF Via message, ExtFmt- EETLPPrefix-
             EmergencyPowerReduction Not Supported, EmergencyPowerReductionInit-
             FRS- TPHComp+ ExtTPHComp-
             AtomicOpsCap: 32bit+ 64bit+ 128bitCAS+
        DevCtl2: Completion Timeout: 50us to 50ms, TimeoutDis- LTR- 10BitTagReq- OBFF Disabled,
             AtomicOpsCtl: ReqEn-
        LnkCap2: Supported Link Speeds: 2.5-8GT/s, Crosslink- Retimer- 2Retimers- DRS-
        LnkCtl2: Target Link Speed: 8GT/s, EnterCompliance- SpeedDis-
             Transmit Margin: Normal Operating Range, EnterModifiedCompliance- ComplianceSOS-
             Compliance Preset/De-emphasis: -6dB de-emphasis, 0dB preshoot
        LnkSta2: Current De-emphasis Level: -3.5dB, EqualizationComplete+ EqualizationPhase1+
             EqualizationPhase2+ EqualizationPhase3+ LinkEqualizationRequest-
             Retimer- 2Retimers- CrosslinkRes: unsupported
    Capabilities: [100 v2] Advanced Error Reporting
        UESta:    DLP- SDES- TLP- FCP- CmpltTO- CmpltAbrt- UnxCmplt- RxOF- MalfTLP- ECRC- UnsupReq+ ACSViol-
        UEMsk:    DLP- SDES- TLP- FCP- CmpltTO- CmpltAbrt- UnxCmplt- RxOF- MalfTLP- ECRC- UnsupReq+ ACSViol-
        UESvrt:    DLP+ SDES+ TLP- FCP+ CmpltTO+ CmpltAbrt- UnxCmplt+ RxOF+ MalfTLP+ ECRC+ UnsupReq- ACSViol-
        CESta:    RxErr- BadTLP- BadDLLP- Rollover- Timeout- AdvNonFatalErr+
        CEMsk:    RxErr- BadTLP- BadDLLP- Rollover- Timeout- AdvNonFatalErr-
        AERCap:    First Error Pointer: 00, ECRCGenCap+ ECRCGenEn+ ECRCChkCap+ ECRCChkEn+
            MultHdrRecCap- MultHdrRecEn- TLPPfxPres- HdrLogCap-
        HeaderLog: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    Capabilities: [300 v1] Secondary PCI Express
        LnkCtl3: LnkEquIntrruptEn- PerformEqu-
        LaneErrStat: 0