LSI 2308 card not seeing Samsung PM853T SSDs at all?

[miraculix]

Hey folks, I'm seeing an interop issue between LSI 2308 based controllers and Samsung PM853T SSDs (MZ7GE960HMHP). I wasn't sure whether to post here or in the controller forum, but the SSDs do appear to be the culprit. In a nutshell these SSDs simply don't show up, period. The HBA hangs a bit while scanning, and then... nothing!

I've seen lot's of interesting LSI+SSD threads out there around performance (usually write caching related) or data corruption (initial P20 firmware), but nothing about the confounded SSDs not showing up like this, and to be honest I'm not even sure where/how I can get good diagnostic info if the LSIs don't even see the SSDs. Any ideas where to look? Anyone out there successfully running PM853Ts on LSI controllers, and if so which one(s)?

Additional details:

• I have three LSI 2308 cards total, all Supermicro AOC-S2308L-L8i, same behavior
• My goal is IT mode only, but I've flashed the controllers to IR and IT modes, with/without BIOS, from P16 up to P20, both SM and stock LSI/Avago firmware... no change in behavior
• The PM853Ts work fine on the integrated SATA ports (AHCI mode) of the Xeon D X10SDV systems they're used in
  
• Other SSDs onhand (Samsung 840 Pro, Crucial M500 and M550) work fine with the controllers
• Other HDDs onhand (WD 2TB NAS WD20EFRX and Seagate 4TB NAS ST4000VN000) work fine with the controllers
• The SFF-8087 to mini SAS cables I'm using are unusually short (0.5M SFF-8087 to SATA cable Archives - Pactech) but they worked fine with the other HDDs/HDDs above. Even so, I swapped in known good cables from working systems just to be sure.

SIDE NOTE these AOC-S2308L-L8i cards turned out to be incredibly easy to crossflash using the UEFI version of sas2flash... which is great since I've flashed and reflashed ad nauseum while troubleshooting this problem. I've got a fourth one running great in my NAS and I'd recommend them to anyone not using PM853Ts

 

[cw823]

Have you tried just a single drive? I bought some Samsung enterprise SSD drives and encountered issues where if I put more than one drive on the same controller, it would only see 1 drive (and sometimes no drives if more than 1 drive was installed on same controller)

 

[miraculix]

Yes... no luck with even one SSD connected at a time.

 

[miraculix]

Other than the integrated Lynx Point PCH SATA on the motherboards, I don't have other controller models on hand to test. I'm hoping someone chimes in with an LSI controller they do have working with PM853Ts.

 

[coolrunnings82]

I've got a bunch of those SSDs working on LSI controllers. Initially they didn't seem to work because they had been part of a Storage Spaces pool.

 

[coolrunnings82]

If you want to send me one of those SSDs, I can test and see if it's a firmware related issue or something. I have an integrated 2308 raid controller on one of my Supermicro boards and a M1015 card in another that we could test with. Let me know.

 

[miraculix]

If you want to send me one of those SSDs, I can test and see if it's a firmware related issue or something. I have an integrated 2308 raid controller on one of my Supermicro boards and a M1015 card in another that we could test with. Let me know.

I plan to try a few things first over the weekend once I get back from travel, but I may take you up on that offer... thank you!

BTW what firmware do the PM853Ts have currently? EXT0303Q?

Also..

I've got a bunch of those SSDs working on LSI controllers. Initially they didn't seem to work because they had been part of a Storage Spaces pool.

Just to 100% confirm...

• So you do see these SSDs working fine with the 2308 on the mobo specifically? If so how is that controller set up (IT/IR mode, firmware rev, etc.)? Would love to see "sas2flash -list" if not too much a hassle.
  
• By "they didn't seem to work", do you mean the LSI controller didn't detect them, or that the OS couldn't handle them (maybe heartburn over whatever Storage Spaces does for partitioning)?

Thanks again!

 

[coolrunnings82]

The firmware on mine is EXT04W3Q. The motherboard is a Supermicro X9DR7-TF+ with the onboard 2308. I don't have it up right now because I'm in the process of doing some maintenance on my servers at present but it has the IR firmware and as of 2 months ago was the latest available from Supermicro. Can't get ya the output of the sas2flash -list at present since I've removed all the drives in preparation for transferring to a Dell R720 coming next week.

When I say they didn't seem to work here's what happened:
On a machine with an Intel controller, I tried to install Windows Server 2012 R2 on them and the drives would not even show up in the list of drives to install to, even after manually loading the storage driver. I installed on some Seagate Pro 600 drives without issue. I then reinstalled the PM853T's and they showed up in device manager under disks but did not show up in disk management. I ran server manager and found that some of the drives from the last SS pool these were in were missing. I blew away the SS configuration and the drives were immediately available. I then installed them in the Supermicro server and they worked there without issue as well. These two servers haven't been in production use - just lab tests and such so I can't give you any performance numbers but I never had any performance issues with them in the lab tests with a dozen VMs running on them. Hope that helps!