I'm trying to update and re-purpose a 5 year old DELL PowerEdge T110 that only has SATA 2 ports on-board. Upgraded RAM and CPU from eBay at low cost. I was also able to get a good deal on (3) Samsung 850 EVO SSDs. First, a 250GB to be used for Windows Server 2012 R2 DataCenter Host OS, second, a 500GB to house active (non including backups) data, and a third 500GB to house several VM's.
Evaluation copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 DataCenter installed as the HOST operating system on one of the Samsung 850 EVO SSDs connected to the on-board SATA 2 port is much more responsive with the RAM and CPU upgrades and compared to the HDD before.
Knowing that the Samsung 850 Evo SSD's are performance limited on the SATA 2 ports compared to SATA 3 especially once all of the VM's are configured and actived, I purchased a used DELL LSI YCKHM (LSI 9210-8i OEM) SATA 3 (6Gb/s) HBA from eBay.
I successfully re-flashed to LSI 9210-8i from an old P11 IR firmware to the latest P20 Firmware and BIOS in IT mode.
LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 20.00.00.00 (2014.09.18)
Copyright (c) 2008-2014 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved
Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B2)
Controller Number : 0
Controller : SAS2008(B2)
PCI Address : 00:02:00:00
SAS Address : 500605b-0-05f0-7b30
NVDATA Version (Default) : 14.01.00.06
NVDATA Version (Persistent) : 14.01.00.06
Firmware Product ID : 0x2213 (IT)
Firmware Version : 20.00.07.00
NVDATA Vendor : LSI
NVDATA Product ID : SAS9210-8i
BIOS Version : 07.39.02.00
UEFI BSD Version : N/A
FCODE Version : N/A
Board Name : SAS9210-8i
Board Assembly : H3-25329-01C
Board Tracer Number : SP24648833
Moving SSDs to the LSI, I tried to re-install Windows Server 2012 R2, but even though HBA was detected after loading drivers in setup, I was not able to install on the HOST SSD -- I received "Unknown error". Gave up fairly quickly and moved HOST SSD back to on-board controller as I considered that Host OS ran decently well on on-board controller already. Furthermore, most of the work will be done on the DATA and especially VM's SSDs, and as long as those 2 can run on the 6Gb/s LSI 9210 I'd capture most of the benefit.
Windows Sever 2012 R2 booted. The LSI controller was recognized as were the 2 850 Evo's attached to it. All Windows updates were applied, and drivers updated, including LSI driver to latest. I could also successfully transfer data TO/FROM any of the 3 SSDs.
As per Drive Manager, all drives were recognized as Media Type "Solid State Disk", including those attached to LSI HBA. However, when I tried to issue an Optimize on each of the SSD's, it runs successfully only on the Host SSD attached to the on-board SATA. The 2 SSD's attached to the LSI HBA in IT mode show "Optimization not available". I was under the impression from all of my research that it should work if the HBA is flashed to IT mode which it was. (But then again, I also though I should be able to boot from an SSD attached to the LSI, but that didn't work either).
I already moved the HOST OS boot SSD back to the on-board SATA 2 because I couldn't get the OS to install, and now I'm not comfortable running the DATA and VM SSD's without TRIM pass-through on the LSI because I'm afraid that the SSD's will quickly deteriorate to worse performance with lack of TRIM then if they were on the slower SATA 2 with TRIM functioning properly. This would leaving the faster SATA 3 6Gb/s HBA to run maybe 1, or 2 Physical HDD that can't even saturate a SATA 2 3Gb/s port.
Can anyone confirm that TRIM should work on the LSI 9210-8i in IT mode in Windows Server 2012 R2? All my google searches have always turned up FREENAS or ZFS users that say TRIM works once the HBA is flashed to IT mode, but I don't recall anyone specifically saying that it works in Windows Server 2012.
Or, does anyone know if these issues are an incompatibility with the relatively dated 3400 Chipset in the Dell PowerEdge 110? (not PowerEdge 110 II) I don't readily have another machine that I can spare to test that theory.
If it should work, can anyone lead me to what I may have done wrong so that trim is not being passed and also maybe why I can't install HOST OS to an SSD attached to HBA if they are related?
Appreciate in advance any assistance as I have already invested an embarrassingly huge number of hours researching and executing each step to this point and I'm ready to quickly revert to simply running off of the built in SATA 2 ports for the sake of reliability and preserving my sanity and moving on- additional performance be damned.
Evaluation copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 DataCenter installed as the HOST operating system on one of the Samsung 850 EVO SSDs connected to the on-board SATA 2 port is much more responsive with the RAM and CPU upgrades and compared to the HDD before.
Knowing that the Samsung 850 Evo SSD's are performance limited on the SATA 2 ports compared to SATA 3 especially once all of the VM's are configured and actived, I purchased a used DELL LSI YCKHM (LSI 9210-8i OEM) SATA 3 (6Gb/s) HBA from eBay.
I successfully re-flashed to LSI 9210-8i from an old P11 IR firmware to the latest P20 Firmware and BIOS in IT mode.
LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 20.00.00.00 (2014.09.18)
Copyright (c) 2008-2014 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved
Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B2)
Controller Number : 0
Controller : SAS2008(B2)
PCI Address : 00:02:00:00
SAS Address : 500605b-0-05f0-7b30
NVDATA Version (Default) : 14.01.00.06
NVDATA Version (Persistent) : 14.01.00.06
Firmware Product ID : 0x2213 (IT)
Firmware Version : 20.00.07.00
NVDATA Vendor : LSI
NVDATA Product ID : SAS9210-8i
BIOS Version : 07.39.02.00
UEFI BSD Version : N/A
FCODE Version : N/A
Board Name : SAS9210-8i
Board Assembly : H3-25329-01C
Board Tracer Number : SP24648833
Moving SSDs to the LSI, I tried to re-install Windows Server 2012 R2, but even though HBA was detected after loading drivers in setup, I was not able to install on the HOST SSD -- I received "Unknown error". Gave up fairly quickly and moved HOST SSD back to on-board controller as I considered that Host OS ran decently well on on-board controller already. Furthermore, most of the work will be done on the DATA and especially VM's SSDs, and as long as those 2 can run on the 6Gb/s LSI 9210 I'd capture most of the benefit.
Windows Sever 2012 R2 booted. The LSI controller was recognized as were the 2 850 Evo's attached to it. All Windows updates were applied, and drivers updated, including LSI driver to latest. I could also successfully transfer data TO/FROM any of the 3 SSDs.
As per Drive Manager, all drives were recognized as Media Type "Solid State Disk", including those attached to LSI HBA. However, when I tried to issue an Optimize on each of the SSD's, it runs successfully only on the Host SSD attached to the on-board SATA. The 2 SSD's attached to the LSI HBA in IT mode show "Optimization not available". I was under the impression from all of my research that it should work if the HBA is flashed to IT mode which it was. (But then again, I also though I should be able to boot from an SSD attached to the LSI, but that didn't work either).
I already moved the HOST OS boot SSD back to the on-board SATA 2 because I couldn't get the OS to install, and now I'm not comfortable running the DATA and VM SSD's without TRIM pass-through on the LSI because I'm afraid that the SSD's will quickly deteriorate to worse performance with lack of TRIM then if they were on the slower SATA 2 with TRIM functioning properly. This would leaving the faster SATA 3 6Gb/s HBA to run maybe 1, or 2 Physical HDD that can't even saturate a SATA 2 3Gb/s port.
Can anyone confirm that TRIM should work on the LSI 9210-8i in IT mode in Windows Server 2012 R2? All my google searches have always turned up FREENAS or ZFS users that say TRIM works once the HBA is flashed to IT mode, but I don't recall anyone specifically saying that it works in Windows Server 2012.
Or, does anyone know if these issues are an incompatibility with the relatively dated 3400 Chipset in the Dell PowerEdge 110? (not PowerEdge 110 II) I don't readily have another machine that I can spare to test that theory.
If it should work, can anyone lead me to what I may have done wrong so that trim is not being passed and also maybe why I can't install HOST OS to an SSD attached to HBA if they are related?
Appreciate in advance any assistance as I have already invested an embarrassingly huge number of hours researching and executing each step to this point and I'm ready to quickly revert to simply running off of the built in SATA 2 ports for the sake of reliability and preserving my sanity and moving on- additional performance be damned.