Supermicro A1SAi-2750F PCI-E Not Seeing Cards

[ascareg]

I've been around the forums for almost 2 years, mostly lurking as I worked on a home c6100 build. Now I've decided its time for a smaller, quieter NAS box. The components of choice:

• Supermicro A1SAi-2750F
• SilverStone DS380B
• IBM m1015 HBA

The c6100 was my first significant foray into server motherboards IPMI/BMC and the "server-grade" BIOS stuff, so I'm new-ish, but also not a complete n00b. I've been running ESXi, OmniOS, and SmartOS (with OSX, Linux, Windows VMs) for some time.

My parts showed up this week and I was excited to put it all together. When done, I powered up, PXE booted into SmartOS and everything seemed great!

Then I noticed that only a disk attached to motherboard SATA was working... The m1015 wasn't recognized, uh oh. m1015 was from eBay, so who knows... but I did all the testing I could think of with EFI shell and DOS boots to run megacli and sas2ircu, trying to detect the card. No dice. Obviously SmartOS didn't see it either, and Linux didn't even show it in lspci.

Ok... next step, try the card in a different box. First I tried my ASUS p8z77-v desktop... again no dice. But hey, maybe the m1015 doesn't like that board.

Ok... so I tried it in a c6100 blade. Still nothing.

Also, I should mention, the m1015 never got warm, there was no LED, etc.

At this point it seems pretty likely the HBA is no good.


So, I figured I'd try an old Sil3132 card I've had lying around. I put it in the A1SAi-2750F and....
NOTHING.

Same routine, SmartOS, Linux and never detected.

But this time, I tried it in my ASUS desktop, and Linux's lspci DOES see the card. So that's good, but my new Supermicro A1SAi-2750F doesn't.

I'm pretty stumped. I've been through the manual several times. I've tried enabling the SMB PCI-E jumpers and disabling (the default). I've googled and found some stuff about ASPM(Active State Power Management) forcing to L0... I've looked at enabling/disabling oprom on the PCI-E slot... nothing seems to get it working.

I'm really hoping I'm missing something obvious, or not... but maybe I've got a bad board? I know others are using these, so I'm hoping someone has some ideas to share.

Thanks!

 

[whitey]

I had a BAD run w/ a set of 3 M1015's, flashed one for a buddy, no issues, got my hands on 3 more, flashed all three using SAME process and bricked them, some here say I was not diligent enough w/ ESD protection but I say what eve's :-D I have long ago been on the naughty non-esd strap wearing list but being careful to ground myself to the chassis/rack/etc to discharge. I think I just had a bad day of IT juju cause I flashed them, they worked and I saw them in ESXi, passwd it through to OmniOS for ZFS use then later they just died...LED's went out, had a dim green led on one port, a member here had some level of success replacing some component fuse...I forget what it was called but it was beyond my electronics tinkering skillset or more than I wanted to take on at the time. Got some 9211-8i's, all good again.

I think the M1015's may be shall I say eh hem...'hypersensitive to static/ESD nuiscances'...just my 2cents.

 

[ascareg]

I think the M1015's may be shall I say eh hem...'hypersensitive to static/ESD nuiscances'...just my 2cents.

Thank you for the input... in the future I probably should be more careful with ESD... that said, I can deal with the M1015 being bad, whether it was truly DOA or if i zapped it... but I'm more concerned about why now my SIL3132 shows up in my ASUS board but not in the Supermicro board.

I was starting to wonder if the M1015 could have killed my Supermicro's PCIE slot until the SIL3132 worked in the ASUS... I guess it's still a possibility though.

 

[CreoleLakerFan]

When in doubt, open an RMA and let the vendor figure it out.

 

[ascareg]

I'd hoped I was being a moron and missed the BIOS setting marked "enable PCI-E slot". But yeah, outside of that, I agree, this board needs an RMA.

 

[canta]

Check mini fuse near pci-e connector on hba card. Mostly got blown up.
Since no power and activity on m1015 led status

 

[tigweld0101]

I think you might just be using unsupported cards and there's a lower likelihood of success. Do you have a cheap Intel NIC? They work in everything and will tell you if it's the board or not. I'd also check the PCIe slot for damage + debris.

 

[cperalt1]

Glad to see someone else uses SmartOS. Where you able to get OS X working as a VM on SmartOS or something else? As for the board do you have the latest BIOS on the board? If so I agree with the others here, maybe an RMA is in order.

 

[tigweld0101]

Are you guys using SmartDataCenter too?

 

[cperalt1]

I have 3 Nodes running and being managed manually but I also have ProjectFIFO for monitoring (Welcome to Project-FiFo documentation! — Project-FiFo 0.6.1 documentation I have it on my to do list to try the COAL (CloudOnALaptop) install of SmartDataCenter that was made available after they open sourced that part of the project.

 

[ascareg]

I think you might just be using unsupported cards and there's a lower likelihood of success. Do you have a cheap Intel NIC? They work in everything and will tell you if it's the board or not. I'd also check the PCIe slot for damage + debris.

I didn't see damage/debris, though I had looked. I was finally able to get one card, a simple serial port card, to be recognized. However, two other cards with OPROM (the Sil3132 and HP 10GbE card) still were not recognized in either SmartOS or Linux. Since these three cards all work in other boards, but only the serial card worked in the A1SAi-2750F, it seems like it has something to do with OPROM cards. As the M1015 wasn't working in any system, I've RMA'd it.

As for the board do you have the latest BIOS on the board? If so I agree with the others here, maybe an RMA is in order.

I did update the BIOS to latest sometime during the process. No difference. I've just RMA'd the board today.

I basically came to the conclusion that SOMETHING has to be going on with the board because if everyone had this much trouble getting PCI-E cards to work, well, I'd be reading about it in this forum.

Glad to see someone else uses SmartOS. Where you able to get OS X working as a VM on SmartOS or something else?

I've primarily run NFS on the GZ for ESXi, but also used Linux in a KVM brand zone and of course used joyent zones for various services. I switched from Linux on SmartOS-KVM to ESXi because Plex seemed to perform better on ESXi. Recently I've been playing around with the LX zones, I'm eager to be switch over for Plex as it's one of the few things I still need to run on Linux. I've been running OS X and Windows on ESXi because that's dead simple. Oh, I see my original post may have been misleading about where I was running and OS X VM, sorry...

When I first started with SmartOS, I played around with FiFo, but I eventually dropped it. For my simple use case was a lot of effort for relatively little value. Now that SDC has been open sourced, I'm also interested in playing with CoaL, etc. But time it's so limited...

 

[cperalt1]

I've primarily run NFS on the GZ for ESXi, but also used Linux in a KVM brand zone and of course used joyent zones for various services. I switched from Linux on SmartOS-KVM to ESXi because Plex seemed to perform better on ESXi. Recently I've been playing around with the LX zones, I'm eager to be switch over for Plex as it's one of the few things I still need to run on Linux. I've been running OS X and Windows on ESXi because that's dead simple. Oh, I see my original post may have been misleading about where I was running and OS X VM, sorry...

When I first started with SmartOS, I played around with FiFo, but I eventually dropped it. For my simple use case was a lot of effort for relatively little value. Now that SDC has been open sourced, I'm also interested in playing with CoaL, etc. But time it's so limited...

With COAL you should be able to use that for docker VM's as well as that is the docker endpoint. As for the LX Brand, I was able to get PLEX running but the DLNA server was not working. I am also using and LX Branded zone for MakeMKV and Handbrake work.

 

[canta]

I've primarily run NFS on the GZ for ESXi, but also used Linux in a KVM brand zone and of course used joyent zones for various services. I switched from Linux on SmartOS-KVM to ESXi because Plex seemed to perform better on ESXi. Recently I've been playing around with the LX zones, I'm eager to be switch over for Plex as it's one of the few things I still need to run on Linux. I've been running OS X and Windows on ESXi because that's dead simple. Oh, I see my original post may have been misleading about where I was running and OS X VM, sorry...

When I first started with SmartOS, I played around with FiFo, but I eventually dropped it. For my simple use case was a lot of effort for relatively little value. Now that SDC has been open sourced, I'm also interested in playing with CoaL, etc. But time it's so limited...

I switch some from esxi 5.5 to proxmox 3.4. I am satisfied wit Open Virtual Switch to create internal network (ehem, vlan is supported by default), and populating my running VM on esxi to proxmox. I prefer KVM due on layer separation between host OS. LX and docker are nice!, I am not pursuing that direction.

did you use virtio in linu kvm hardware configuration for guest?
virtio is much fast on linux or windows guest. virtio kernel modules are already inside recent kernel distribution

 

[ascareg]

And... I'm not so happy. I just got a new Supermicro A1SAi-2750F... installed in my case using anti-static strap. Installed the Sil3132 card and ... nada. Card still doesn't show under lspci or EFI shell's devices command.

I'm pretty confused. Not seeing anything useful in the BIOS or on the Google. This thread shows up though.

 

[ascareg]

I've finally found a BIOS option that has improved my situation and my trust in the A1SAi-2750F motherboard.

I'm pretty sure this was new as of BIOS 1.1 as my previous board with an older BIOS did not have it, but I did notice it after updating.

Under PCIe/PCI/PNP settings, there is this option: "PCIe Slot 1 Bifurcation" ... the default is "[Auto]" or one may choose "[X4X4]".

With this set to Auto, I could not get either my Sil3132 SATA controller nor the HP 10GbE NIC to work, though the serial card did work as reported before.

When set to X4X4, the SATA controller still does not work, but the 10GbE NIC works!

While I'd like to at least have the option to run the Sil card, knowing that the PCIe slot is working for something other than my simpler serial card gives me more confidence in the board. Also, I checked in with another user of this motherboard and the M1015 who reports them working together OOTB with no extra tweaking ( Silverstone DS380 and M1015 | FreeNAS Community ).

So, I've got an M1015 ordered and I'll report back when I've got it installed and *fingers crossed* working.

 

[ascareg]

My new IBM M1015 SAS card arrived yesterday. It works perfectly! As far as I can tell, no tweaks required on the BIOS level. It is happy with both "Auto" and "X4X4" for PCIe Bifurcation.

Flashed to IT mode and looking good!

Thanks to all who replied!

 

[CreoleLakerFan]

Glad you got it all sorted out. The RMA option can seem a bit extreme, but it really helps to validate testing results. I usually keep poking at hardware until I run out of ideas or get frustrated to the point of physically damaging it, then RMA. Even if it comes back with the same symptoms I have eliminated one potential source of the problem and am motivated to keep searching for a solution.

 

[ascareg]

The RMA option can seem a bit extreme, but it really helps to validate testing results.

Yeah, I hear ya. I was confident I had a bad M1015, so no worries on that RMA. The motherboard, I'm not sure if it had an issue or not... but it's all good now, so I'm happy!

 

[HorizonXP]

Just picked up a Chelsio T320 card from eBay, and I couldn't get it to work on my A1SRi-2758F that's in my 5018A-FTN4. Worked fine in my other FreeNAS machine. @ascareg's solution of changing the bifurcation mode was the only thing that could get this card to be recognized. Unfortunately, pfSense complains about it running in PCIe x4 mode, because it might be reduced performance. The latest 2.0 BIOS update from July 2017 didn't help, it still doesn't work in Auto mode.

At this point, I'm not sure if it's the card, or the board/BIOS.