Cachecade enabled, but option not available

[Arcesilaus]

Hi,

In my storage machine, there is a 9361-16i that works perfectly fine and on which I recently installed a hardware key (LSI00290).
In both LSI Storage Authority and MSM, the advanced option CacheCade Pro 2.0 is reported 'enabled' ('secured' mode, location 'upgrade-key'), which, I assume, is the desired state. Today, based on others reporting Intel S3700 series (not 3500) SSD's to be working fine as caching disks with these controllers, I added two of those, that are reported 'unconfigured good'.

Nonetheless, I can still not find any way to create a CacheCade Virtual Disk: the option is not available for selection in the 'Actions' pane, not present at all in the 'Go To - Controller' menu and cannot be found (at least, not by me) in Storage Authority.

The top 50 hits from most search engines do not provide a new hint any more, so all my hope is on this forum now.
Is there anything I am overlooking here?

 

[i386]

How large are the ssds?

 

[ecosse]

Unlikely but is there any firmware / MSM type issues?

 

[Arcesilaus]

The SSD's are 400GB each. The card has firmware 4.740.00-8452 and I'm running MSM 17.05.06.00 and LSI SA 008.003.012.
When trying through the latest StorCLI64 using command "storcli64 /c0 add vd cachecade type=raid1 drives=252:4-5" the response is 'Status = Failure, Description = Cachecade is not supported'.

 

[i386]

the response is 'Status = Failure, Description = Cachecade is not supported'.

Did you create an array with "Data protection" enabled? (multiple links on google point to that feature, including one ibm site)

 

[Arcesilaus]

Thank you, all, for your suggestions, it is much appreciated!
However, still no luck: there is currently only a single virtual drive and that has 'Data protection = disabled'.
Even without any virtual drives, there was no option to create a Cachecade pool in MSM (had not yet installed LSI SA or StorCLI then).

Just to be sure: is my assumption correct that the status reported for CacheCade Pro 2.0 (i.e. 'enabled', 'secured' mode, location 'upgrade-key') is the desired status? When using a hardware key, no activation is needed, right?

 

[Arcesilaus]

[Edited]
I went once more in the controller's BIOS and found that I was unable to entirely disable the 'Data protection' option, as it seems to be 'built-in' functionality in the controller. In the 'cache and memory' options, the 'SSD-caching' option was shown as 'Disabled', with the description 'Indicates whether the controller is capable of SSD caching or not'.
I was somehow unable to change the value, but a factory reset of the controller did the trick: the SSD caching option is now available in both MSM and LSI SA.
Thank you all for your support!

 

[bandit8623]

[Edited]
I went once more in the controller's BIOS and found that I was unable to entirely disable the 'Data protection' option, as it seems to be 'built-in' functionality in the controller. In the 'cache and memory' options, the 'SSD-caching' option was shown as 'Disabled', with the description 'Indicates whether the controller is capable of SSD caching or not'.
I was somehow unable to change the value, but a factory reset of the controller did the trick: the SSD caching option is now available in both MSM and LSI SA.
Thank you all for your support!

are your virtual drives 512e ? if 4kn thats why you cant create a cachecade. both ssd's and the regular drives need to be 512n or 512e