LSI SAS 9300-8e HBA Not Displaying Drives

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bgoodman89

New Member
May 28, 2024
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Hello!!

I am troubleshooting disks not being recognized by my HBA. I have an overkill HBA for my purpose purchased used from eBay but I figured it would still work for my purpose and was reasonably priced.

For my setup, I'm running:
  • Server
    • HPE DL360 Gen 9
    • x2 Intel Xeon E5-2690 v3
    • x2 16GB DDR4 HP 752369-081 RAM (1 DIMM per CPU)
    • x1 SSD Lexar SATA SSD w/ Proxmox
    • x4 SFF 1TB Dell Constellation SAS HDD
    • 440ar RAID controller set to HBA mode
    • Sun Oracle 7085208 LSI SAS9300-8e
      • Heartbeat light on
  • JBOD
    • Supermicro X10SLL-F motherboard (with Xeon CPU & RAM)
      • ACHI Enabled
      • "SATA RAID Option ROM/UEFI Driver" Disabled
      • PCIe OPROM set to Legacy mode
    • Intel C222 Exp PCH
    • Intel Xeon E3-1275 v3
    • 8GB RAM
    • HDDs
      • connected via SATA ports on motherboard
      • 4-wire power cables from PSU
      • x3 LFF 4TB HP 862127-001 SATA HDD
      • x1 LFF 4TB Seagate Ironwolf SATA HDD (known good)
      • also tested with known good SSD to see is HBA would recognize but did not
    • Thermaltake Smart 600W 80 PLUS PSU
    • Sun Oracle 7085208 LSI SAS9300-8e
      • Heartbeat light on
  • Each HBA connected with x1 Dell EMC SFF-8644 cable

With respect to the JBOD, the drives are visible in SuperMicro BIOS SATA settings but the drives are not visible to HBA in Config Utility. The HBA is visible in the SuperMicro BIOS with very minimal options that seem non applicable such as Legacy Mode enable or disable. A test Proxmox OS running on the JBOD (installed just for troubleshooting this HBA issue) also sees the drives using "lsblk" and HBA is recognized via "lspci | grep SAS".


The SuperMicro motherboard has 3 pci-e slots.
  • PCH SLOT4 PCI-E 2.0 X4(IN X8)
  • PU SLOT5 PCI-E 3.0 X8
  • CPU SLOT6 PCI-E 3.0 X8(IN X16)
  • The motherboard manual say:
    • "Two Serial ATA (SATA) 3.0 connectors (I-SATA 0/1) are located on the X10SLL series motherboard. In addition, four SATA 2.0 (I-SATA 2-5) are located on the X10SLL-F, and two SATA 2.0 (I-SATA 2/3) are located on the X10SLL-SF/X10SLL-S motherboard. These SATA ports are supported by the Intel C222 PCH chip. These SATA ports support RAID 0, 1, 10, and 5..."
  • Thus far, I've only tried slot5 and slot6; but since the PCH supports the SATA ports, I wonder if I need to use PCH slot4 for SATA transmission across PCIe?

I've successfully flashed the firmware of the HBA to IT mode via UEFI shell with SAS9300_8e_IT.bin and bios with mptsas3.rom as well as mpt3x64.rom for direct from Broadcom all using sas3flash.efi. Proper SAS Address corresponding to label on HBA is listed when showing running "sas3flash.efi -list". I can get to the LSI Config Utility when booting in Legacy mode (doesn't show in UEFI) but when selecting SAS Topology, show no drives to display.

The exact same issue is ocurring with the other card running in the DL360. Connecting the HBAs with a properly seated cable SFF-8644 does not pass drive info from the JBOD to the DL360.

Using Proxmox shell, running "cat /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/" yielded some interesting information. It seems to be a a folder displaying configuration settings of the HBA. I believe I may have seen a file or folder titled "locked" and I believe it showed "off" but I'll have to confirm. I wonder if that is something to do with a possible vendor lock option. I can send a screenshot of this directory if needed. For some folders, permission is denied to access but I assume I can adjust that with chmod. I'd be surprised if the answer was something to do with this, but its an option for troubleshooting.

If any additional information is needed please let me know.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thank you!

Resources:

SuperMicro X10SLL-F Manual:
https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/motherboard/C222/MNL-1428.pdf

LSI 9300-8e User Guide: https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/12353313

HPE DL360 Gen 9 QuickSpecs:
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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I could be totally misunderstanding you here, but you mention that the HBA's are connected with a properly seated cable, but don't pass drive info. You also mention that the disks are connected via the onboard SATA ports.

How exactly are the disks connected to the HBA's?
 
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nexox

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May 3, 2023
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As far as I can understand, you may not have set this up quite right. First off, a JBOD chassis doesn't usually have a motherboard, CPU, RAM, etc, it's typically just power and SAS/SATA wiring, either directly to the drive bays or through a SAS expander. Once you add a computer to it, you get a NAS, connected to a network (probably Ethernet,) not SAS, and those HBAs only do SAS. If you replace those 9300-8e cards with network cards you should get a functional NAS setup.
 
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bgoodman89

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May 28, 2024
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Wow okay well thank you all for the feedback! I'm happier to know my setup is wrong than the cards being bad. I am brand new at this type of setup and the current setup is based on some assumptions:
  • That the "9300-e" HBA would see the SATA drives through the motherboard via PCIe of either the SuperMicro or DL360 server. Therefore, pricklypunter, the only "connection" is assumed to work through the motherboard so no other physical connection to HBA.
  • nexox, I left the CPU and RAM in the supermicro because I heard here and there online that a motherboard could be used for a JBOD but some require the CPU to be functional for this purpose. I would have tested removing the CPU and RAM later. Maybe I misunderstood this concept. Is this incorrect?
  • That I could connect two 9300-e HBAs and they would communicate disk information from the motherboards of each computer.
I'm so grateful for your assistance. Could you please provide recommendations for how I can adjust my setup using my available hardware and recommend any new hardwhere where required? My goal is to have the DL360 running Proxmox with TrueNAS VM and other VMs and an my Antec case (currently housing my supermicro motherboard) enclosure serving as a JBOD.

Thank you
 

tinfoil3d

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May 11, 2020
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SAS expander: a backplane or stand-alone card which is connected to backplane where you connect your drives to
HBA: takes connections from SAS expanders or directly from SATA drives off SAS-SATA breakout cables.
You have to connect HBA in your HPE to a backplane that has SAS expander in your supermicro chassis, this would usually need at least 3 jumps: SFF-8643(internal) to 8644(external) to 8644 and 8643 in supermicro.

HBA doesn't talk to another HBA. You simply need to connect the cables off your HP server HBA to backplane of your supermicro.
But if you want to you can have a SAS expander to talk to two HBAs, for redundancy. Easier solution if you want redundancy: a preexisting JBOD solution, already comes with redundant everything: 2 ports on drives, 2 PSUs, 2 SAS modules to connect to your HBA.
 
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nexox

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May 3, 2023
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HBAs need to connect to disks, if the disks are connected to SATA ports they're not going to do anything with the HBA. One thing you could do is take the computer parts out of the JBOD chassis and install a SAS expander like the Adaptec 82885 (only uses the PCIe slot for power, just use the Molex connector instead.) Connect the disks to the internal ports of the expander (using appropriate cables,) and connect the external ports to the HBA in your server. If you had 8 or fewer SAS disks you wouldn't need the expander, you could just get an internal/external passive cable adapter, but SATA drives don't support long enough cables to work in most of those situations, the expander resets the cable length limit.

You also then need to figure out how to power the JBOD chassis on and a place to plug in the fans. There are relatively simple boards for this that connect to the ATX 24 pin power connector.
 
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bgoodman89

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May 28, 2024
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tinfoil3d and nexox wow thanks so much, I'm looking into this. The Adaptec AEC-82885T seems like a perfect solution.

New hardware config:
  • HP DL360 Server
    • 9300-8e HBA
  • JBOD Antec Case
    • ThermalTake PSU (or other lower powered PSU in the future with multiple connectors)
    • SATA HDDs powered by PSU
    • Adaptec AEC-82885T SAS Expander
      • Connected to SATA Drives via SFF-8643 to SATA breakout cables
      • Powered via Molex from PSU
  • Server HBA and JBOD SAS Expander connected via SFF-8644
  • JBOD Fans (x2 120mm PWM fans)
    • Not sure how to power or control yet.
    • A simple, affordable, temperature based control would be ideal if any are available.

So with this setup, the 9300-8e in the server via PCIe only should recognize the drives in the JBOD?

Any recommendations on JBOD fan setup?
 

nexox

Well-Known Member
May 3, 2023
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Any recommendations on JBOD fan setup?
Supermicro makes a couple boards designed for this, they're not super cheap, but they are easy: Supermicro CSE-PTJBOD-CB2 JBOD controller board | eBay

So far as I understand there's no temperature control for the fans, they're just on, you can either get a little manual PWM fan control board to adjust occasionally or buy fans that aren't too loud (but which still move enough air) at full speed.
 

bgoodman89

New Member
May 28, 2024
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Cool thanks for the recommendation, thats a great option. I wonder if I can just use the SuperMicro motherboard already in there to provide PCIe power for SAS Expander as well as power for fans?
 

nexox

Well-Known Member
May 3, 2023
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So with this setup, the 9300-8e in the server via PCIe only should recognize the drives in the JBOD?
I forgot to address this, but yes, unless you get the wrong sort of cable (avoid the "reverse breakout") all the connections and expander should be pretty transparent to the server's OS and you'll just see disks as if they were connected locally, unless you go digging around in the SCSI subsystem details which will eventually tell you there's an expander in the topology.
 

nexox

Well-Known Member
May 3, 2023
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Cool thanks for the recommendation, thats a great option. I wonder if I can just use the SuperMicro motherboard already in there to provide PCIe power for SAS Expander as well as power for fans?
I have heard that if you pull the CPU out of some Supermicro motherboards they will power fans for a JBOD and maybe allow some kind of control/monitoring via IPMI, but I don't know the details. I suspect PCIe may not be available in that mode.
 

bgoodman89

New Member
May 28, 2024
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Alright thanks a bunch. I will get moving on these recommendations and will try to remember to report back when I get it up and running. You guys rock :D
 
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