There a lot of forums around about the Z77 & 1155 socket chipsets not working with these cards, there are certainly issues, but in most cases a MB Bios update should help getting things working. Most of the issues seem to come from "sequencing" & signalling between the MB Bios and the Raid Controller Bios
I have this Card running in my ASUS P8Z77-V LX, updated the bios to latests (circa 2014/06), also flashed the card with Megacli (DOS) to LSI's latest version for the equivalent 9265-8i card. I initially could not get the web bios working on the Z77 motherboard, since ASUS and a number of other manufacturers have some issue with their UEFI BIOS. After 1 week of messing around I discovered a way to get into the web bios, this should apply to most others, it's just a matter of getting the sequence right.
Megacli and Storcli work on these cards, however sas2flash and megarec don't, based on my testing and other forums.
Because of this it's difficult to change the BIOS over from IBM's to LSI's.
After looking at some doco on the internet, I discovered that LSI ship the BIOS for these cards SAS2208 inside their Firmware ROMs.
The problems is how to extract it and install it over the IBM version.
I believe after some testing it is possible to get sas2flash working on these cards only if you were to use a Ubuntu live disk with sufficient storage to install the LSI 9265 drivers and the sas2flash and storcli apps. I've not tried this yet, as it's too time consuming, and at the moment my card is working as needed.
The card is installed in the PCI 3x 16x slot, in the BIOS, the slot is setup as "Auto"
This is the slot closest to the CPU, I think #1.
Booting to webbios on problem UEFI motherboards:
For starters, use the Advanced Bios
Under the Advanced Bios make sure the Bios Boot Menu "Optional Rom Messages [Force Bios]" is set to "Force Bios"
Before trying to access Web Bios is it worth checking that the card can be access from DOS using Megacli.
Alternatively make sure you can use the Pre Megacli environment form the card itself. (I think CTRL-Y)
1) <DEL> on Asus or * Splash Screen, or what ever the MB Bios entry key is.
The MB Bios should then flash up the Raid Controller Bios booting page.
2) <CTRL+H> on the Raid Controller Bios screen for the Raid Controller
3) Immediately <DEL> before the Asus or * Splash screen, this pushes you back into the Asus or * Bios
The MB Bios should then flash again, it depends on the timing.
- On a ASUS you have 3 options, <F2> or <DEL> for MB Bios Main or the Boot Selector Option<F8> => "Menu" or "Start Bios"
4) Select Boot from the Advanced Menu
5) Scroll to the bottom and select the Manual Boot Override - Raid Controller, which has now been told to boot to Web Bios.
6) Select, you will be forced to choose Save and Exist select yes, this will start Web Bios.
7) Exit as required and reboot etc.
You could also try going from #3 above direct to Raid Controller option boot, I've not tried it but I suspect it would work, this would save not having to go back into Advanced Menu in the MB Bios
Getting back into the Asus bios for changes:
Select <DEL> or <F2> or <F8> just after the Raid Card Bios POST.
Make Changes as required and save.
What I can see is happening is that the <CTRL+H> tells the card to boot the Web Bios host, (likely a java based server), one time, rather than letting the card boot the preferred disk.
From a lot of reading on other Forums, the issue appears to be signalling between the Bios and the Raid Controller. For Server/Workstation boards this is more formalized apparently.
By forcing the sequence, which you can on the ASUS UEFI Bios, it appears you can trick it into booting the Web Bios.
I then built a VMware 5.5 update 0, live USB with Stor Cli and the Realtek 8111E NIC drivers inserted into it using ESXi-Customizer-v2.7.2.
I had tried 5.5 Update 2 but this failed, not sure why.
Also when using update 0 I had a number of success/failures on getting the live 5.5 disk to see the controller.
I've not pinned down what the issue is here. I messed around with different starting sequences and got it installed but ran out of time to find the exact issue.
Just try it yourself and see how you go.
Alternatively try an Openstack or Hyper-V install if you need to use this as a VM Server.
- Cheers
