Help with LSI9206 (Not seeing drives in R620)

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Ben Alexander

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Jul 15, 2018
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I recently acquired a full Dell Compellent Storage System for a project I have in mind.
  • Dell R620
    • Dual Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2690 v2 (FOURTY 3Ghz vCPUs of POWAR!!)
    • 32GB RAM
    • 2 x 146GB SAS HDD
  • 2 x Dell Compellent Storage SC8000
  • 2 x Dell SC200 Storage Arrays
    • A) 12 x 2TB SAS HDD
    • B) 12 x 600GB SAS SDD
  • 2 x Brocade 300 Switch
    • Each with 8 x 8Gbps Fiber channel SFP+ populated
  • Assorted cables
This is overkill for my project and as I am looking to host it in a colo, where space is at a premium, I'm looking for the slimmest storage solution to connect to the R620.

I have taken the HBA card (LSI9206) from the SC8000 unit and installed it into the R620. I was hoping to be able to connect the SC200 storage array (a 'smarter' MD1200 apparently) directly to this.

I don't see the LSI firmware when booting, but I do see the card with lspci in the OS. I just can not see any drives now tho. (I'm trying to run the R620 with Core OS, but can switch out to CentOS or other if need be).

Is what I am trying to achieve possible? Is there anything else I need to do to get these drives recognised on the R620? This is my first foray into DAS and I am a little lost here.

---

$ sudo lspci | grep -v Intel
02:00.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 2208 [Thunderbolt] (rev 05)
04:00.0 Fibre Channel: QLogic Corp. ISP2532-based 8Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBA (rev 02)
07:00.0 PCI bridge: Renesas Technology Corp. SH7757 PCIe Switch [PS]
08:00.0 PCI bridge: Renesas Technology Corp. SH7757 PCIe Switch [PS]
08:01.0 PCI bridge: Renesas Technology Corp. SH7757 PCIe Switch [PS]
09:00.0 PCI bridge: Renesas Technology Corp. SH7757 PCIe-PCI Bridge [PPB]
0a:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. G200eR2
42:00.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. Device 8724 (rev ba)
43:01.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. Device 8724 (rev ba)
43:08.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. Device 8724 (rev ba)
43:09.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. Device 8724 (rev ba)
44:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2308 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 (rev 05)
46:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2308 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 (rev 05)
 
fohdeesha

fohdeesha

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My first guess would be the LSI has some funky firmware on it since it came from a dell storage appliance, I know previous dell storage firmware has locked things to dell drives only, could be the case here. First step I would take is flash it with stock LSI9206 IT firmware from LSI.

The reason you don't see it on boot is because they didn't flash it with the bootrom part of the firmware (which is usually advisable if you're only using it to connect to a disk shelf and not to boot OS's with)

searching reddit I do see a few people succesfully using SC200's as dumb disk shelves with non-dell hardware, so it should certainly work if your cables and everything else are good
 
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fohdeesha

fohdeesha

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After browsing around, it's quite a PITA finding the latest fw with the broadcom acquisition, but here it is for the 9206-16E - https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12354745

You can safely just flash the 9206-16e.bin firmware file and NOT the bios rom.

Easiest way is generally using something like Rufus to create a freedos bootable USB, then put the sas2flsh.exe file (from the sas2flash_dos_rel folder) on the root of the USB drive you just made, along with the 9206-16e.bin firmware file. If you want to flash the BIOS bootrom (not recommended if it will not be hosting boot disks), drop the mptsas2.rom file on the USB stick as well. then just boot off the usb stick.

then in freedos:

Code: 
#the below command should list your card, to know it's recognized
sas2flsh -listall
#erase current firmware
sas2flsh -o -e 6
#flash new firmware
sas2flsh -f 9206-16e.bin
#might take a few minutes
#OPTIONAL: if you want to flash the bootrom, run the below as well:
sas2flsh -b mptsas2.rom
#when its done, cold boot the server to get the card to reinitialize
 
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Ben Alexander

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Jul 15, 2018
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fohdeesha said:
After browsing around, it's quite a PITA finding the latest fw with the broadcom acquisition, but here it is for the 9206-16E - https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12354745
Click to expand...
This . Is . Incredible.

Thank you so much, that worked perfectly. I followed your directions, rebooted and the drives are perfectly accessible as JBOD. (I did mistakenly install the BIOS update as well, thinking I'd get access to the RAID setup... Which was a bust, as I now know this is a NON-RAID card :)

If you feel like it, please feel free to PM me the cost of a beer where you are, along with your paypal/BTC/ETH address, as I owe you a drink!

Cheers
 
Spartacus

Spartacus

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May 27, 2019
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This was great and helped me out as well, couldn't figure out what it didn't like about any of my drives flashed to 20.0.7 and magic.
Something to add for folks with multiple cards when you do the sas2flsh -listall (I have a H310 and the 9206-16e, so 3 devices total))
You can add -c # into the command to specify the card (since the 9206 has 2 controllers they were flashed separate)
This was mine with the H310 being card 0:

Code: 
#the below command should list your card, to know it's recognized
sas2flsh -listall
#erase current firmware
sas2flsh -c 1 -o -e 6
sas2flsh -c 2 -o -e 6
#flash new firmware
sas2flsh -c 1 -f 9206-16e.bin
sas2flsh -c 2 -f 9206-16e.bin
#might take a few minutes
#OPTIONAL: if you want to flash the bootrom, run the below as well:
sas2flsh -c 1 -b mptsas2.rom
sas2flsh -c 2 -b mptsas2.rom
#when its done, cold boot the server to get the card to reinitialize
The card is a Dell LSI SAS 9206-16e Part: 0TFJRW
 
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ServantDad

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May 14, 2021
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fohdeesha said:
After browsing around, it's quite a PITA finding the latest fw with the broadcom acquisition, but here it is for the 9206-16E - Broadcom Inc. | Connecting Everything

You can safely just flash the 9206-16e.bin firmware file and NOT the bios rom.

Easiest way is generally using something like Rufus to create a freedos bootable USB, then put the sas2flsh.exe file (from the sas2flash_dos_rel folder) on the root of the USB drive you just made, along with the 9206-16e.bin firmware file. If you want to flash the BIOS bootrom (not recommended if it will not be hosting boot disks), drop the mptsas2.rom file on the USB stick as well. then just boot off the usb stick.

then in freedos:

Code: 
#the below command should list your card, to know it's recognized
sas2flsh -listall
#erase current firmware
sas2flsh -o -e 6
#flash new firmware
sas2flsh -f 9206-16e.bin
#might take a few minutes
#OPTIONAL: if you want to flash the bootrom, run the below as well:
sas2flsh -b mptsas2.rom
#when its done, cold boot the server to get the card to reinitialize
Click to expand...
Holy hell thank you!!! I spent two days on this getting it to work.
 
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