M5015 - Keep IBM firmware or flash to LSI 9260?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Mr. F

Active Member
Sep 5, 2011
172
30
28
I have acquired an M5015 that I am using for RAID5, and I'm planning on ordering one of the keys from ebay to get RAID6.

I'm wondering if there are any compelling reasons to flash to an LSI 9260, or if I should just keep it as an M5015? The card has an older IBM firmware, 12.12.0-0085, and I have the package to upgrade it to 12.13.0-0179 but I haven't done so yet.

What do you think? Keep it as an M5015 and upgrade to the latest firmware from IBM, or cross flash to LSI 9260? My use case is spinning 3TB SATA drives in RAID5 now and in RAID6 later when I receive the feature key.
 

Rhinox

Member
May 27, 2013
144
26
18
IIRC, M5015 was famous for very long boot-up time. After cross-flashing to LSI9260 it booted much faster. One more reason, LSI has usually newer firmware then resellers...

If this does not sound interesting to you, then you can stay with original IBM firmware...
 

britinpdx

Active Member
Feb 8, 2013
367
184
43
Portland OR
If you want the ability to spin down the drives (power save) then flash with the 0048 firmware. I have that on my M5014's and 9261 cards as it's a feature that I like to have.
 

Mr. F

Active Member
Sep 5, 2011
172
30
28
If you want the ability to spin down the drives (power save) then flash with the 0048 firmware. I have that on my M5014's and 9261 cards as it's a feature that I like to have.
Have you had any reliability issues with the power save features? From what I have been reading LSI disabled it because they claimed it was problematic.

I actually did try running the IBM updater, but it will only run on an IBM server. I went ahead and flashed the firmware with latest LSI, but I haven't done the SBR rewrite yet to get past the annoyingly long M5015 boot. Not sure if I'll do that or not, but everything is working well at the moment.
 

britinpdx

Active Member
Feb 8, 2013
367
184
43
Portland OR
Have you had any reliability issues with the power save features?
No problems at all, reliability has been good so far. My primary fileserver runs 24/7 and it is mostly just Audio/Video streaming and likely spends 90% of it operational time idle, so I want the disks to spin down. I can live with the 6 to 8 sec spin up when needed.
 

Mr. F

Active Member
Sep 5, 2011
172
30
28
No problems at all, reliability has been good so far. My primary fileserver runs 24/7 and it is mostly just Audio/Video streaming and likely spends 90% of it operational time idle, so I want the disks to spin down. I can live with the 6 to 8 sec spin up when needed.
Thanks for the report. How many spindles are you running and what RAID level?

I'm planning on doing RAID6 once I get the ebay key, probably with 5 drives to start.
 

Mr. F

Active Member
Sep 5, 2011
172
30
28
Same Toshiba drives here! Thanks again for the report.

On another note, where did you purchase your advanced feature key?
 

craze

New Member
Aug 7, 2014
13
2
3
32
If you flash the SBR over to the LSI one, does the card still want IBM feature keys, or does it then require LSI branded ones? I ask, as the LSI ones are far more expensive...