Storage Advice Needed for iSCSI

[BSDguy]

I would call LSI HBAs "best of all" for a professional filer on any OS.
But there are also bugs like LSI 2008 based controllers with a firmware 20.000... 20.004 with known problems especially with fast SSDs.

In such a case, you must update firmware to current 20.007
If you use software raid (btrfs, ReFS, ZFS) prefer the IT firmware.

I just checked my LSI 2308 firmware and guess what...I was running 20.004! I've just upgraded to 20.007 (the latest version released in May this year). I hope this will help and fix the issue of my SSDs disconnecting...

 

[BSDguy]

So after a long day of restores I have done the following to (hopefully) help my sad situation with my storage magically vanishing:

• Upgraded the LSI 2308 firmware to 20.07
• I have set my fan controller on the SAN to run at full RPMs to reduce the temps (although the heatwave is over here now)
• Uninstalled Starwinds Virtual SAN (the console was so screwed I couldn't get it to open without crashing) and installed latest build when reinstalling
• I've formatted my 4 SSDs with ReFS when creating the lsfs storage on the disks in Starwinds Virtual SAN
• I restored almost all my VMs from backups and added the newly created datastores to vCenter for the hosts

I'm hoping that the combination of the above helps to make my storage stable!!

 

[darklight]

I've formatted my 4 SSDs with ReFS when creating the lsfs storage on the disks in Starwinds Virtual SAN

I would never do this. As much as I understand log-structured file system (LSFS) is a journaled file system much like ReFS so you are putting one journal on top of another which is not really effective. Furthermore, according to this page, Log-Structured File System – StarWind Virtual SAN®- Starwindsoftware.com LSFS was designed to speed up slow spinning arrays that are not capable of handling tough random workloads which is not your case since you have an RAID5 of SSDs that gives you around 25k-30k random IOps for sure.

To my opinion the best configuration in your case would be RAID5 SSD (Write-back/Always Read-Ahead) --> NTFS --> StarWind Image File (without caching). If you don't fit the storage capacity and deduplication is crucial I would start with Windows built-in one (which is offline and sucks compared to inline like SW does but still...).

 

[BSDguy]

I would never do this. As much as I understand log-structured file system (LSFS) is a journaled file system much like ReFS so you are putting one journal on top of another which is not really effective. Furthermore, according to this page, Log-Structured File System – StarWind Virtual SAN®- Starwindsoftware.com LSFS was designed to speed up slow spinning arrays that are not capable of handling tough random workloads which is not your case since you have an RAID5 of SSDs that gives you around 25k-30k random IOps for sure.

To my opinion the best configuration in your case would be RAID5 SSD (Write-back/Always Read-Ahead) --> NTFS --> StarWind Image File (without caching). If you don't fit the storage capacity and deduplication is crucial I would start with Windows built-in one (which is offline and sucks compared to inline like SW does but still...).

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. From what I remember reading on the Starwind forum, Virtual SAN doesn't care if it uses NTFS or ReFS. Also, I thought moving forward LSFS was the format to choose when using their Virtual SAN product as it was going to be the one actively developed (and it supports dedupe etc).

Someone correct me if I am wrong as it was a while ago that I read about this. I only chose ReFS to help with the issues of my SSD drives "vanishing" randomly over the last week during the heat wave and was hoping that it would help with corruption.

I can go back to NTFS again if I have to. I'm just hoping the new firmware keeps my drives connected!

 

[BSDguy]

Touch wood and all that my storage has behaved itself since my last post.

Does anyone know if it is possible to reflash the LSI 2308 firmware on the Supermicro X10SL7-F motherboard from IT mode to IR mode?

I'm thinking of using RAID10 with my SSDs for my storage but currently it is using IT mode.

Has anyone used RAID10 with this motherboard and the LSI2308 controller with SSD drives?

 

[Spearfoot]

Does anyone know if it is possible to reflash the LSI 2308 firmware on the Supermicro X10SL7-F motherboard from IT mode to IR mode?

I'm thinking of using RAID10 with my SSDs for my storage but currently it is using IT mode.

Has anyone used RAID10 with this motherboard and the LSI2308 controller with SSD drives?

I've never used the IR firmware on my X10SL7-F, but Supermicro makes it available so I'd be comfortable using it if the need ever arose.

ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/Driver/SAS/LSI/2308/Firmware/

 

[BSDguy]

I'm sure the last time I tried to flash IR firmware on my LSI2308 which has IT firmware there was an issue with doing this. So are there any special/extra/different steps I need to convert my IT firmware to IR?

There's plenty online about flashing IR firmware to IT but not the other way round.

 

[Spearfoot]

I'm sure the last time I tried to flash IR firmware on my LSI2308 which has IT firmware there was an issue with doing this. So are there any special/extra/different steps I need to convert my IT firmware to IR?

There's plenty online about flashing IR firmware to IT but not the other way round.

I don't know of any special steps you need to take.

The Supermicro LSI firmware linked above has everything you need to flash the chip to IR mode using either DOS or UEFI.

Seems like I had to use UEFI to update my X10SL7 to P20.00.07.00 of the IT-mode firmware, but it's been quite a while and I may be 'mis-remembering'.

I suggest you make a note of your chip's SAS address and then edit the SMC2308R.NSH script, specifying the full 16-digit address like this:

sas2flash.efi -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Good luck!