IBM M1015 Experiences

[mobilenvidia]

The M1015 isn't too bad compared to the M5015 (LSI9260) which gets very toasty.

I think it's best to avoid tower cases where the card end up upside down, and the heat gets trapped.
Lie case on side so the heat can travel up.

 

[odditory]

Curious to see if/when an SAS2008 driver releases for Win8/Server 2012 and if it'll allow hddsleep command ATA passthrough from O/S.

In the past this wasn't working and Microsoft's reasoning was because add-on cards get treated as SCSI adapters, and thus the drives attached to them treated at SCSI drives, and so certain ATA commands were ignored. This was supposed to have changed/improved in Win8/Server 2012.

 

[mobilenvidia]

There is a driver included with M5015 experiences first post link.
It's the driver that LSI pulled a few days after release.
Works fine on the M5015, should also work on the M1015 in native LSI9240 mode.
But be warned my LSI9261 crashes system (unresposive) and drops arrays with this driver

 

[nronksr]

Hello,
I picked up 2 new M1015 cards today. However, they were shipped to me in a 2 small priority mail boxes... that's it. No static bag, no rubber-band, no padding etc.

My question: What's the best way to test these cards for hardware failures? :\

 

[mobilenvidia]

Plug them in and see, only real way.

Cards are pretty hardy, can take quiet a beating, only weakness might be something getting bent or broken

 

[Patrick]

I tend to agree with mobilenvidia.

 

[low858]

turns out my berzerko fans were due to the mobo driver. i since then actually shut off the server completely rather than restart and that seem to have done it -- odd maybe it needed a full shutdown to "switch" on this config. the card still runs hot, but not overbearingly hot.

 

[odditory]

The cooling answer for a fanless heatsink on a controller is a 40x40x10mm fan, or if you have an empty space next to the card for the increased fan depth, 40x40x20mm.

This is what's on all my HP SAS Expanders: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0016CMCBG/

Makes a big diff temp-wise, especially in summer.

 

[RimBlock]

Plug them in and see, only real way.

Cards are pretty hardy, can take quiet a beating, only weakness might be something getting bent or broken

I had two sent from an Amazon vendor in static bags and then just put in a padded envelope (both in the same envelope). They then travelled from the US to Singapore. Both arrived with the metal feature key pins bent (these are pretty hard to bend). Both worked fine.

They are hardy indeed .

RB

 

[nronksr]

Thanks for the update and info! As soon as the drives arrive, I'll throw them in and test them out via the array.

 

[low858]

The cooling answer for a fanless heatsink on a controller is a 40x40x10mm fan, or if you have an empty space next to the card for the increased fan depth, 40x40x20mm.

This is what's on all my HP SAS Expanders: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0016CMCBG/

cool. thanks for the link. are there power connectors on the card? tried doing a quick search on the webs, but did not identify whether i can plug directly onto the m1015.

 

[Dami]

Please help. I have a m1015 with an old fw (.59 i think) and i tried to update it with the latest. I already updated 2 cards to IT mode without problems (following the tutorial and files from the OP), but for this one card i wanted to leave it as an IBM card. Since I didn't found how to direct update the fw (ibm -> ibm) I've done this:
megarec -cleanflash 0
<reboot, back to USB>
megarec -m0flash 0 0101_ibm.rom

It updated several unknown things , and after the reboot it now hangs after displaying the card name and version (frist 3 lines). Is there anything I can do or is it bricked. If so, what is the procedure to update the stock card to newer fw?

 

[Bitbuster]

Too slow in Raid 10?

I went for an M1015 card on a new Windows Server 2012 machine. I tried to flash the original LSI firmware but wasn't successfull - Looks like Supermicro Serverboards are not working with the SASflash?!

Anyway, I just upgraded it to the latest M1015 firmware, made a Raid 10 Drive consisting of 4 x Intel M510 240GB.
This is what CDM, ATTO and Anvil gave me for speeds.
Are these regular speeds for this kind of setup?

 

[odditory]

Are these regular speeds for this kind of setup?

Regular speeds for what 4 x 510's are capable of in RAID10 generally speaking, no. Regular speeds for 4 x 510's on an M1015 in RAID10 mode, yes.

Most people aren't using M1015's for the integrated light raid stack, because its less than stellar. Most people are using M1015's for JBOD.

 

[mobilenvidia]

The M1015 doesn't do parity calculations well at all, and it shows with SSD's.
M1015 in RAID is better suited to spindled drives.

Better off in IT mode and let the OS do the Parity/striping.

 

[sboesch]

I am letting the M1015 do handle the parity right now, it has been flashed as the SAS9211-8i. I am running heavy on the CPU and RAM on the server because of the Hyper-V machines chugging along in the background. I have 8 Hitachi 7K3000 series 2tb disks in RAID 10.
Needless to say that the performance is not stellar, but it is not sucking CPU cycles from my anemic Core i3 2100.

I ordered a new server chassis today, I am going to move the disks over to it along with the controller. I intend to give ZFS one more chance with the controller in IT mode.

 

[Bitbuster]

The M1015 doesn't do parity calculations well at all, and it shows with SSD's.
M1015 in RAID is better suited to spindled drives.

Better off in IT mode and let the OS do the Parity/striping.

I wasn't able to flash anything else than the IBM Firmware so it seems I'm stuck with it.
I'm surprised to read that because I read some pages before in this thread that there is no better controller for a raid10-job.
I played a little more with the settings and updated the windows drivers. The speed has incresed by about 20% but it looks like as this is as good as it can get.

I think that's quite reasonable isn't it?

Do you think I could do better with just JBOD and do a Raid10 within Windows?
Or would I be better off with something like die M5015 which has cache onboard? I didn't pick that controller because I read on this Forum that it's even slower in Raid10 than the M1015.

 

[mobilenvidia]

Did you try sAS2flash in Windows or SAS2flsh in DOS ?
I would do any flashing in DOS.

Speeds look very respectable to me
Windows would probably do it faster, but if Windows broke you can't access the drives till you re install windows

 

[Patrick]

What about UEFI sas2flash.efi? May help too.

 

[Bitbuster]

Yes I tried flashing in DOS but got the famous error-message. Looks like supermicro-serverboards are not compatible with sasflash.
Haven't tried UEFI...Goog idea.