Dell SAS 6 IR Integrated -> LSI SAS3081E-R IR Firmware NVRAM issue

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bookemdano

New Member
Jun 29, 2011
15
0
1
Hi all,

I always seem to go against the grain, and this looks to be yet another instance. I've read lots of posts about people wanting to flash IT firmware to their 1068e-based IR controllers, and I understand why.

My situation's a little different though. I've got a Dell Precision T7500 (beast of a machine!) that has a Dell SAS 6ir adapter integrated onto the motherboard. I wanted to play with the RAID 1E and 10E IME levels that LSI includes on their card (which Dell does not) so I thought I'd give it a go using SASFLASH to flash over to LSI firmware. Using the -o flag it worked great.

But upon rebooting and going into the BIOS setup utility, the card is still recognized as a SAS6IR and only raid modes 0 and 1 are available. I was scratching my head at first until I saw the field "NVDATA Version" = Mismatch on the adapter properties screen. So it seems even though I successfully flashed it over to the LSI card, all of the data in the NVM still thinks it's a 6IR.

I tried the "reset to defaults" option in the BIOS utility to no avail. So I'm wondering if anyone else has any ideas. Is there another switch in SASFLASH that will wipe the NVM? Or can LSIUTIL do it?

It's not the end of the world if I can't do this. I was just more wanting to play with the IME raid levels and test throughput up against plain raid 1 and see if I'd gain much of anything.

I'll be using this adapter for my ESXI disk images, so it's important for me to have it mirrored. At this point in time I don't feel like adding the complexity of storing the images on a ZFS or something. Maybe at some point but right now it looks like the 1068e adapters are well-supported in ESXI and so that sounds good to me.

Anyone got any advice? This site is great!
 

morpheus256

New Member
Mar 21, 2012
7
0
1
Hi!

I was wondering if you ever found a solution to this problem, I'm attempting to do the exact same thing, and low and behold, I'm experiencing the exact same problem! :)
 

bookemdano

New Member
Jun 29, 2011
15
0
1
Hi!

I was wondering if you ever found a solution to this problem, I'm attempting to do the exact same thing, and low and behold, I'm experiencing the exact same problem! :)
Yes I did. It's been a while and the details are a little fuzzy but I believe I used sasflash to erase the card (you can only do it from DOS I believe). Check the docs for sasflash--I can't remember the exact switch I used, but the gist is that it puts the card in manufacturing mode, at which point you can flash it with whatever BIOS and firmware you want and it will load the nvdata fresh (so no more mismatch).

Post back if you can't figure it out and I will try to find the proper utility and switches I used.

Good luck!