LSI RAID Controllers - PCIe2-6Gbps / Windows Server 2022

[Moopere]

I've just spent the better part of today fooling about with an LSI9260-8i in a whitebox server. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to force this RAID controller to work with Server 2022. There appears to be no built-in driver with 2022 and the older (2018?) LSI driver refuses to load with Windows just telling me to get an updated driver.

Server 2019 works fine using the LSI driver which has really got me scratching my chin.

Theres a fair bit of conflicting chatter out whether 2022 _requires_ UEFI ... these older LSI RAID cards really prefer an MBR system, but they will boot via 'CSM' into UEFI - so I doubt this is the root of the problem

Is there an internal blacklist of PCI ID's that 2022 just won't even try to use?

I'd dearly love to hear from anyone using one of the 2xxx ROC based cards in Server 2022 - there are literally millions of them out there both LSI branded as well as restamped by IBM, Intel, Dell, Lenovo, Supermicro, et al. Have spent hours gouging Dr. Google and no-one has anything useful to say it seems - which makes me think I'm either doing something fundamentally wrong or else everyone in the community of home labs has moved on to 3xxx based PCIe3 controllers (which probably work... though I've not tested any).

 

[Moopere]

Really looks like the answer to this is no. Yesterday I even tried upgrading a fresh Server 2019 installation, on MBR, with the 9260-8i RAID, nope - Windows 2022 installed complains about the RAID card and won't let the upgrade continue.

I strongly suspect shenanigans here - surely a driver that works perfectly fine in 2019 should also be fine in 2022? Whats changed in the WDM under the hood? Anyway, for now, looks like my lab is stuck on 2019. I reckon a driver hack or inf hack would fix this and I'll come back to try that when time allows.

 

[skyjam]

I also had massive troubles installing a new Server2022 with a disk array connected to an LSI 9270CV-8i.
(This is SAS2208 based, not SAS2108 as the 9260-8i you refer. But maybe it helps as probably the driver is the same)
It always resulted in a BSoD while booting after a finisshed install using UEFI.

I found out what the problem really is: the driver in the ISO does not work with this controller!
One needs to replace the driver.

I could circumvent this by:

• installing to a drive connected to any other controller without anything connected to the LSI controller and then removing the driver from the OS and installing the one from LSI website. After, attaching drives are OK. But the OS must be moved, too.
• manipulating the ISO by removing the driver (multiple locations, don't know anymore) and injecting the one from LSI website
  I don't know exactly what tool I used, maybe NTLite

I ended up having a fully functional system by manipulationg the ISO.
Running this now with a Lenovo x3650 M4, UEFI, 16 HDDs/SSDs connected.

Hope this helps.

 

[Moopere]

@skyjam - Oh thats intesting. I've got a couple of 9270CV-8i cards I need to go check one of these.

They use the same driver and the problem you report is something I've bumped into as I did my google searches. Its a good heads-up.

I imagine that during install if you 'load drivers' at the point where you are partitioning volumes it should get you past the problem of BSOD once rebooting into the fresh system.

I wonder how to make this work for SYSREP'd images? That could be a real problem as I'd imagine the driver with the highest revision would win during PnP discovery if there are two candidates. Probably best to do as you have and remove the offending/faulty driver from the original image.

Thanks for giving me some confidence that the 9270 should work. 936x's on Ebay are very expensive. You can still get some 9270CV's at reasonable prices so I'll look into that once I've done some testing with the units I have already.

 

[JSchuricht]

I have a few older LSI cards working on 2022 server. They are all set to UEFI boot, haven't tried legacy BIOS. I think both were in place upgrades from 2019 server.

Supermicro X9DBL-3F with 9280-4i4e and 9286CV-8e on driver 6.714.18.0
Supermicro X10DRI with 9271-8iCC running driver 6.714.5.0

 

[Moopere]

@JSchuricht: Thats curious. The 9280 is using a 2108 ROC same as my 9260. I can't get the driver to even load.

It appears on face value that the 9260 is being specifically targeted by the installer. Its not that the card just fails to boot or fails to work once the driver is installed - and I've seen this type of behaviour with old cards on new OS's before. It feels like a list has been looked up, the 9260 is found, then the system tells you 'nope' and thats the end of it.

I can't imagine what sort of hardware level bug I'm being guarded against though if the same chipset using the same driver _does_ work in a 9280-4i4e with 4 internal lanes and 4 external lanes ... they even appear to use the same firmware (!!???)

The 9286 and 9271 use the 2208 ROC which @skyjam above also reports as working so long as one doesn't use the in ISO packaged driver - so its nice to have a second positive experience with these.

 

[Moopere]

Thought I'd come back to this as I still haven't resolved anything.

As per my OP, LSI 9260-8i trying to install Server 2022, the windows installer boots up and then gets stuck because it can't load an appropriate driver.

I can't take any of my 9270cv-8i out of service at the moment so I ordered another one off ebay. They've dropped in price a lot over the last 12 months ... I suspect the end is nigh for these old 6gbps cards.

The card came but I've been diddled by the seller. Although I'm pretty careful about ordering RAID (or other) cards off ebay as they are all parted out of old servers despite what the ads say in this case looks like I got stung.

The card has an NEC sticker on the back of it, not a great start if you specifically ordered an LSI channel card, it boots up telling you its a 9270cv-8i and its looks pretty normal otherwise. Boot up Windows server 2022 and it blue screens, per @skyjam's experience and others from a google search. The source of the problem is that the driver version supplied with Server 2022 is 6.714.22 which is apparently known to give a BSOD.

Its quite a job to remove the ISO default drivers but did that and now the installer can boot and it immediately asks me for a driver (as it did for the 9260). Give it driver v6.714.18 (the last from LSI) and the installer recognises my card as a 9265cv-8i (!!!). The installer can't proceed past this point as I suspect, similar to the 9260, the PCI device ID has been blocked by the Windows Installer for some reason.

I verified the cards pci device ID and its definitely a 9265cv-8i, so I don't know whats going on. Perhaps the ebay seller cross flashed the NEC device with LSI firmware? The 9265 and 9270 are mightily similar cards. Perhaps NEC simply ordered an under spec card with an out-of-spec visible name? In any event, the card is going back to the ebay vendor and I'll try my luck ordering another one from another vendor - I'll ask for a photo of the pci id as verification this time lol.

The heads-up here though is that the 9265-8i is a ROC 2208 card, same as the 9270cv-8i, though its PCIe Gen2 rather than Gen 3. Other than that the cards are almost exactly the same. Physically they look identical. But my take away is that there is something other than being 2208 based thats preventing Server 2022 being installed. Perhaps the 9265cv-8i ended up on the blocked list inside the installer by mistake?

 

[Moopere]

Actually I think there is a drive to push out of service these legacy PCIe Gen2 devices for some reason. Googling around it appears that Redhat has, or is about to, also retire support for the LSI PCIe gen 2 RAID cards - no incompatibility is being publicly referenced and its apparently not a soft 'unsupported' either - the driver is missing, on purpose.

 

[Zombiesquad]

If you go to Lenovo support files and downloads for Thinkserver RS140 and select raid they have drivers bundled for many LSI / ANYRAID cards. I download bundle for Win 10 copied it to a USB and pointed the Server 2022 installation toward them and they worked like a dream. Since the drivers are for the card which is rebranded and bundled in many forms I assume they would work for others too.
YOU could also browse back up the tree a bit more and see if there is a more applicable model / time frame.
Hope this is of some use to somebody.

I don't know if I am allowed links but if I am here it is.

servers :: thinkserver :: rs140 :: 70f2 - Lenovo Support GB

datacentersupport.lenovo.com

 

[LamestHolio]

I just got 2022 installed on an IBM X3550 M4 with an IBM ServeRAID (megasys2) 5100 raid card.
I had to inject drivers into the install.wim and boot.wim files on the setup ISO.

#inject drivers into the install WIM.
Mount-DiskImage -ImagePath E:\Temp\Server_2022_updated_march_2024_x64_dvd.iso
Copy-Item H:\* E:\Images\ISO\ -Recurse

Get-WindowsImage -ImagePath E:\Images\ISO\sources\install.wim

Mount-WindowsImage -Path E:\Images\Mount -ImagePath E:\Images\ISO\sources\install.wim -Index 4

Add-WindowsDriver -Path E:\Images\Mount -Driver E:\Images\Drivers -Recurse

Dismount-WindowsImage -Path E:\Images\Mount -Save

#Run again against the boot.wim file.
Get-WindowsImage -ImagePath E:\Images\ISO\sources\boot.wim

Mount-WindowsImage -Path E:\Images\Mount -ImagePath E:\Images\ISO\sources\boot.wim -Index 2

Add-WindowsDriver -Path E:\Images\Mount -Driver E:\Images\Drivers -Recurse

Dismount-WindowsImage -Path E:\Images\Mount -Save


# Split up the install.wim file so we can put it on a fat32 formatted thumb drive. needed for UEFI mode install.
dism /Split-Image /ImageFile:E:\Images\ISO\sources\install.wim /SWMFile:E:\Images\ISO\sources\install.swm /FileSize:4096

Copy-Item -Path E:\Images\ISO\* -Destination I:\ -Recurse -Exclude install.wim

#Dump the contents of E:\Images\ISO\* to USB Thumbdrive.

Edit. Driver injected was megasas2.sys version 6.714.5

 

[nabsltd]

# Split up the install.wim file so we can put it on a fat32 formatted thumb drive. needed for UEFI mode install.

Note that Rufus will create a UEFI Windows boot disk with a stub FAT32 partition for UEFI boot and a larger NTFS partition for the actual data, so you don't have to keep the WIM file FAT32-compatible.

 

[cheezehead]

The 2012 driver should be compatible with Server 2022.

LSI 9265-8i,9285-8e, 9285CV, 9260-8i, 9280-8e SAS RAID Windows Server 2012 Driver 6.702.07.00 2014 BLK2 | Driver Details | Dell India

I'm running a lower in 9211-8i under Server 2022 right now, though I'm not trying to boot off of it.