Cross-flashing an IBM M5014 to LSI 9260

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mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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The M5014 will only take hardware keys from IBM or Lenovo. They will not accept cross-flash hardware keys (tried it!)
 

Sic_Alpha

New Member
Aug 2, 2016
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I just purchased an IBM ServeRAID M5015 and was hoping to flash the firmware to LSI 9260-8i as in this article:
How to Flash IBM ServeRAID M5014 to LSI 9260-8i Firmware

I don't have a SuperMirco mobo thus wanted to verify that this Live CD will be OK for me.
New Project - Supermicro IPMI 2.0 BIOS Update Live CD

I also assume that I could just copy the sas2108 directory to my own Live CD and use the commands and files from the above tutorial, the sas2018 folder.

I was hoping to use a newer firmware. I obtained the 12-15-0-0189 LSI firmware from here:
MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i

I believe that is the correct firmware. Will it still work or should I use the 0102_lsi.rom file on the above Live CD sas2018 folder? I noticed this comment in another thread "0189 seems to be the latest firmware that doesn't revert to M5015." which is why I chose that version.

Also if the 0189 firmware will work can I still use the sbrlsi.bin on that Live CD's sas2018 folder with it? Or do I need to find one that is correct for the 12-15-0-0189 driver?

Apologies for so many questions. This is my first RAID x-flash.

Thank you in advance.
 
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Cemal

New Member
Feb 28, 2017
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I have cross-flashed an IBM M5014 to LSI 9260-8i, But seen!

I will flashed about 10 firmwares from old to new with the known method written at this site!

1) megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
2) megarec -writesbr 0 sbr9260.bin
3) megarec -cleanflash 0
4) reboot
5) megarec -m0flash 0 xxxxxlsi.rom

Seen that, only certain firmwares accept 9260 banner, some others not!

I have shorten the last 10 firmware versions:

0102 --> OK
0111 --> OK
0124 --> X
0139 --> OK
0151 --> OK
0154 --> OK
0167 --> OK
0189 --> OK
0205 --> X
0239 --> X

The one's OK accepted sbr9260.bin at the banner, and the initiation time at the start is short!
The X one's did not accepted sbr9260.bin, and initiation time was also long....



BUT, BUT, BUT, also WHAT!

The OK ones get very high write results at ATTO disk benchmark v3.05, very well, close to read speed! (Between 2~2,5GB after 512KB file sizes.)
The X one's get very very low write speeds, more than "20 times" lower!

==> So, be aware of this problem! <==

IBM original firmware is , not only slowly initializing disc's at the beginning, but also very low performing at write speeds!
I have left my card bios at the latest 0239 for that reason.


Note: I did not "do anything" at configuration screen, when testing the different build of bios'es above.
I was using 7 x Corsair GS 128 SSD's with Raid 0 configuration before trying bios'es.
Automatic configuration and no redundancy was chosen when building the Raid 0 set.


One more thing: I have tested the same Raid 0 configuration with a smilar LSI 9211-8i and Highpoint 2720SGL cards. They performed much better with Raid 0 configuration. More than 3GB with LSI 9211-8i, and nearly 3GB with Highpoint 2720SGL.

If you are serious at SSD Raid 0, those two cards perform better than 9260 variant!
 
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hlhjedsfg

Member
Feb 2, 2018
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Old post but usefull for me.
@Cemal Thank's for your post ! It save me lot of time.
So just cross flash mine to 0189, working great.

I will try a cheap chinese key for cachecade, hope it will work !
 

Dominic Cooper

New Member
Aug 28, 2018
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Just cross flashed my M5014 to 9260 using 0111 rom, but then after a firmware update from broadcom website to the latest 0239 rom - I got reverted back to M5014 card, but load time is still great. but CacheCade still doesn't work (i have a key for M5014).
Which rom version supports CacheCade and will still keep me on 9260 instead of getting me back to m5014.
 

H.Has

New Member
Feb 17, 2020
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Just cross flashed my M5014 to 9260 using 0111 rom, but then after a firmware update from broadcom website to the latest 0239 rom - I got reverted back to M5014 card, but load time is still great. but CacheCade still doesn't work (i have a key for M5014).
Which rom version supports CacheCade and will still keep me on 9260 instead of getting me back to m5014.
Sorry again to bring this subject but I'm wondering if there has been any new discovery on this strange controller
I've spent a day exploring my options to do jbod.
Ok will write my conclusion in few days