Does an LSI OEM SAS2308 9217-8i support a 10Tb HDD ?

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MarkMarques

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In a nutshell : I have a Supermicro X8DT3-LN4F sever and the original LSI SAS RAID PCI expander apparently does not support a 10TB HDD .
Got a AOC-USAS2-L8A-ISO18 without any sucess ..

So I am now to figure that I have to get another PCI HBA ...
Thinking about an LSI 9217-8i with the SAS2308 chipset , is it viable ?

Edit: In the end, the issue were the 10Tb Seagate HDDs not the HBA controllers .
Thank you for all for the support info ...
 
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BLinux

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The X8DT3-LN4F has an old SAS-1 RAID controller based on Broadcom SAS1068E, so it is limited to 2TB HDDs. The AOC-USAS2-L8A however is based on LSI SAS2008 chipset which does support SAS-2 (6Gbps) and should support larger HDDs. I've used 8TB HDDs with SAS2008 controllers many times.

the SAS2308 is an improved version of the SAS2008, supporting PCI-E 3.0 and being a little faster and able to handle more IOPS. it is also a SAS-2 controller like the SAS2008, so it should support large HDDs. However, in your X8DT3 board, the PCI-E 3.0 is not going to benefit you and it will just fallback to PCI-E 2.0 link speeds. Make sure to install it in an electrical x8 lane PCI-E slot though...

I don't know why you had issues with the AOC-USAS2-L8A. Maybe you should elaborate on that. Your problem might not be the SAS-2 controller, but rather your HDDs. I've seen Seagate SAS-3 HDDs that don't fallback to SAS-2 as they should so they don't get recognized properly by the controller. This is a problem with Seagate SAS-3 HDDs only, not the controller.
 

JSchuricht

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You could also be running into a format issue. A 512e drive should on the sas2 card work while a 4kn needs a newer controller.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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You could also be running into a format issue. A 512e drive should on the sas2 card work while a 4kn needs a newer controller.
Do you have any further info on that? I don't have any 4kn drives myself but I've not heard of this limitation before, and the compatibility matrix for the SAS2008 chips I've looked at include 512, 512e and 4k drives in the list.
 

MarkMarques

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As indicated in the tread none of the PCI expanders identify the HDD ...
(brand new sealed Seagate 4kn 10Tb )

The AOC-USAS2-L8A SAS2 Controller simply ignores the HDD ...
The SAS1 model takes about 120s ( complete time for initi ) then blocks at boot, reporting something incorrect during initialization phase...

Being my first home server experience I do not need the latest speed or tech , just volume ...

Nonetheless , a dumb question : how do I know which are the 8x PCI lanes ?
 
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nthu9280

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Did you check if it's due to the power disable feature of the newer drives? You may have to tape 1-3 pins or use molex 4 pin to SATA power cable to rule that out. Molex does not have 3.3v.
 

MarkMarques

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In the X8DT3-LN-4F server I have a 12 HDD backplane | frontplane where 11 Bays are at the moment empty and one of them have the BBU for the original SAS1 RAid controller.
The backplane is power supplied by 2 molex plugs, all the 11 SAS plugs belong to the backplane and have the conventional SAS | SATA integrated interface aggregated into a 8087 connector going to the PCI Controller.

So, @nthu9280 , which pins are you talking about ?
The HDD model is the ST10000VN0004 , SATA AF .
 

nthu9280

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Is this a Supermicro chassis?
What backplane do you have ? Bpn-sas???. If it is SAS1 expander, it could contributing the issue of compatibility with the larger drive. I don't have expander BPN so not 100% sure.

Check your HDD specs & Googleon SAS3/SATA3 power disable and there are plenty of instructions on how to tape sata power pins 1-3.
 

BLinux

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@MarkMarques As I mentioned above, and @nthu9280 mentions, your issue might not have to do with your controller, but rather your HDDs or backplane.

I've had a lot of problems with Seagate HDDs, brand new or not; and it's not just about reliability. Like I said, there SAS-3 HDDs won't work with SAS-2 when it should.

Let's start with the model of your backplane. If it is SAS1, then that might be an issue. If you have the cables to directly wire from the HBA to your HDDs directly, try that and by-pass the backplane.

@nthu9280 makes a good point about the "power disable". If these drives meet the SATA 3.3 spec, they will have this feature. Although, in my experience, most backplanes do not supply 3.3V, but maybe yours does? You can block the power disable feature with some tape; i have a video i posted about this and show what you need to do:


Try that on 1 HDD and see if it spins up.
 

MarkMarques

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At the moment I am still waiting for a SAS2308 ( LSI 9217-4i) controller.

Nonetheless, what I have is a BPN-826A backplane which I suppose doing simple HDD aggregation ( or at least I hope ) ...

The previous "reply" is probably what is happening to me ( power disable pin issue), as I even tried ( without success ) accessing the 10TB from a simple external HDD case ...
Until I receive the new SAS2308 controller I will keep the HDD offline ...
Thanks for all the info ...
 

BLinux

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At the moment I am still waiting for a SAS2308 ( LSI 9217-4i) controller.

Nonetheless, what I have is a BPN-826A backplane which I suppose doing simple HDD aggregation ( or at least I hope ) ...

The previous "reply" is probably what is happening to me ( power disable pin issue), as I even tried ( without success ) accessing the 10TB from a simple external HDD case ...
Until I receive the new SAS2308 controller I will keep the HDD offline ...
Thanks for all the info ...
that might not be power disable then... AFAIK, the BPN-SAS-826A backplane does NOT supply 3.3V so should not have issues with "power disable" HDDs. you can tell, because the backplane is driven by a few molex connectors, which do not have a 3.3V power source.
 

MarkMarques

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After some further research I had to reverify the backplane type and apparently I have a BPN-SAS2-826EL1 ...
But Despite being marked as 2>Tb compatible I have found a small note on the supermicro site( which I can not found right now ) stating that it does not support Helium HDDs ... Why ?

Another question ( I still have not received the LSA SAS 9217-8i controller but ) :
in order to crossflash it to IT mode ( <=> downgrade it and transform it into a 9207-8i ) do I have to delete all the firmware components or can I simply reflash only the LSI SAS 9207-8i IT part only ?
 

BLinux

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After some further research I had to reverify the backplane type and apparently I have a BPN-SAS2-826EL1 ...
But Despite being marked as 2>Tb compatible I have found a small note on the supermicro site( which I can not found right now ) stating that it does not support Helium HDDs ... Why ?
I don't know where you saw that, but I don't think it is true. I have 8TB WD Reds from the Easystore deals, and these are basically SATA versions of the He HDDs by HGST/WD. And they work.

Another question ( I still have not received the LSA SAS 9217-8i controller but ) :
in order to crossflash it to IT mode ( <=> downgrade it and transform it into a 9207-8i ) do I have to delete all the firmware components or can I simply reflash only the LSI SAS 9207-8i IT part only ?
if the card already has IT firmware, you can just flash it to the latest IT firmware. If it has IR firmware, you have to erase it, and then flash the IT firmware. A lot of the tools will not allow flashing over IR firmware with IT firmware.
 

MarkMarques

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Got the LSI SAS 9217-8i controller but now I have more problems than I bargained for:
( because I have the server in an different site )

I assembled the controller in a another computer ( P8P67 motherboard without any HDDs attached to this controller ) but visually I do not have any indication of being active.
No Bios menu, no strings , no nothing ...

Although in Linux I get in dmseg :
( several other lines related to mpt2sas_cm0 but I think the most important is )
mpt2sas_cm0: LSISAS2308: FWVersion(14.00.01.0),ChipRevision(0x05); BiosVersion(07.27.00.00)

calling lspci I get:
02:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2308 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 (rev 05)

I tried the DOS, Windows, and linux official Broadcom sas2flash utils to ID the controller but with no sucess as they keep giving "No LSI SAS Controller found. " message .


So, now, I have more question than before:

Is this a fake LSI SAS 2308 card ? ( I got it from ebay ... )
Do I have to "erase it" via megarec ( as almost everyone else indicates in several forum posts ) to afterwards be able to be seen by sas2flash util ?

Am I interpreting correctly the "FW14.00.01.0" string as being the firmware version P14 ?
( where the latest in the broadcom site is P20 ) ?

Thanks in advance
 
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BLinux

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if you're seeing mpt2sas_cm0, then the Linux driver had detected the card and has loaded. So, the card is working at "some" level...

it might help if you show us exactly what commands you ran, on what platform, and cut&paste the output.

determining "fake" vs "genuine" SAS controllers is not usually a matter of it working or not working.

if it is already in IT mode, which it appears to be if the mpt2sas driver is loading (instead of the megaraid driver), then you don't need to do any erasing.

yes, it looks like the card has P14 firmware.
 

MarkMarques

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Answering your question:
I only tried the "Broadcom" original utils sas2flsh ( arch linux ) , sas2flash.exe ( both in windows7 and FreeDOS) calling with the "-listall" flag with the response "No LSI SAS adapters found!" ...

$ ./sas2flash
LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 20.00.00.00 (2014.09.18)
Copyright (c) 2008-2014 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved

No LSI SAS adapters found! Limited Command Set Available!
Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
Exiting SAS2Flash.
---------------------------
As I stated before I connecting this to a Asus P8P67 board but I do not see any Bios string before POST nor any information in the BIOS Menu itself ...

During the weekend I will connect this to the final machine and check if has a different behaviour during startup ...
Still...
I will have to check if nas4free ( FreeBSD) ( now XigmaNAS ) has some problems with it ...

How can I check if it is an IBM, DELL, HP or other manufacturer?

As soon as I have more info I will update the post ...
Thanks for the support ...
 

MarkMarques

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Solved the problem by using the P8P67 native UEFI shell...
Executed only the sas2flash.efi utils and flashed 1st the firmware version to P20 IT mode from the LSI/ broadcom official bin .
( Although in order to crossflash I had to use the old P5 sas2flash.efi util ...)

Afterwards ( in the server ) noticed the MPT2SAS bios screen information reporting an very old version ...
went back to other board and flashed only the mpt2sas.rom also with the latest from LSI / Broadcom official rom file.

Still I did not saw any of the 3 10TB Seagate HDDs ...

Loosing my patience I went to try and connect every single HDD in the P8P67 board via conventional SATA connection and to my dismay none of them started correctly ...
They started with strange noises and blocking the BIOS ..

So in a nutshell I had all this trouble for 3 Seagate HDDS that were faulty ...
Going to RMA them and wait again ...

Thanks for the support ...
 

BLinux

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I can't tell you how often I still hear negative stories about Seagate HDDs, lost count years ago and figure it would be a phase, but they still struggle to improve their quality control.
 

Connorise

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I can't tell you how often I still hear negative stories about Seagate HDDs, lost count years ago and figure it would be a phase, but they still struggle to improve their quality control.

"I can't tell you how often I still hear negative stories about Seagate HDDs" That's so true.

To add to the topic, yes 10Tbs should be supported without issues.