Supermicro backplane firmwares + woes

[Chuckleb]

I'm going to call Supermicro and see if I can get them to give me backplane firmware but was wondering if anyone had some around for the 24 and 12 bay backplanes. Single expander models.

We are having the craziest time with these. An LSI card plugged into them gets topology or discovery errors if there is a drive in the chain. If there isn't it works fine. This is for both SAS and SATA drives. Using a M1015, I can get into the WebBIOS but when I look at a drive, it links up at 1.5Gbps (SATA) or 3Gbps (SAS).

Anyone have ideas? 12 rear backplanes and 8 front backplanes do this now. We have 3 sets of good though.

backplane is the only odd factor I think. So firmware hunt it is.

 

[Chuckleb]

Nevermind, fixed. Stupid me grabbing SAS backplanes instead of the SAS2 backplanes.

 

[Patrick]

Nevermind, fixed.

+1 that is all you needed to say.

 

[TubaMT]

Nevermind, fixed. Stupid me grabbing SAS backplanes instead of the SAS2 backplanes.

Can you explain how you fixed it? I'm looking into buying a used Supermicro SC836 chassis with either the LSI SASx28 (BPN-SAS-836EL1) or LSI SAS2x28 (BPN-SAS2-836EL2) expander chip in the backplane. From what I've read it seems like the LSI SASx28 chip only supports 1.5 Gbps with SATA but 3 Gbps with SAS drives. The LSI SAS2x28 chip supports 6 Gbps for both SATA and SAS.

Were the problems you were having due to you using the SAS 1 backplanes instead of the SAS 2 backplanes? I've read from different forums that people have had trouble with the SAS 1 expanders (though I do not know what those problems are). Were they just speed problems you were having?

Thank you for the help!

 

[Chuckleb]

I can't believe my mistake is actually useful for someone. Yes, get the BPN-SAS2 backplanes. Loads better support. My experience matches to what you describe. Here's what you'll find:

SAS backplane:
- Links at 1.5Gbps for SATA, 3.0Gbps for SAS
- Updated LSI cards will report topology or discovery errors. Have to downgrade to original stock firmware (circa 2011).
- Various drive ports will work then stop working.

SAS2 backplane:
None of the above. Everything works flawlessly.

I had purchased 14 enclosures from a reseller and 3 of them came as SAS2, 11 as SAS. I didn't realize it (nor did he) so I spent better part of a week trying to figure it out. We were able to get some to work and others, not. Couldn't figure things out until we reduced to backplane. We didn't bother checking, merely assumed. The quickest way to check is to read the PN on the board, otherwise drop into the LSI BIOS and see what you link up at. You'll get a beautiful red bar on top if you are on the SAS backplane.

Picture of MegaBIOS complaining

My test bench at work - needed something to figure this out when testing 30 boards.

 

[TubaMT]

I can't believe my mistake is actually useful for someone. Yes, get the BPN-SAS2 backplanes. Loads better support. My experience matches to what you describe. Here's what you'll find:

SAS backplane:
- Links at 1.5Gbps for SATA, 3.0Gbps for SAS
- Updated LSI cards will report topology or discovery errors. Have to downgrade to original stock firmware (circa 2011).
- Various drive ports will work then stop working.

SAS2 backplane:
None of the above. Everything works flawlessly.

I had purchased 14 enclosures from a reseller and 3 of them came as SAS2, 11 as SAS. I didn't realize it (nor did he) so I spent better part of a week trying to figure it out. We were able to get some to work and others, not. Couldn't figure things out until we reduced to backplane. We didn't bother checking, merely assumed. The quickest way to check is to read the PN on the board, otherwise drop into the LSI BIOS and see what you link up at. You'll get a beautiful red bar on top if you are on the SAS backplane.

Picture of MegaBIOS complaining

My test bench at work - needed something to figure this out when testing 30 boards.

It definitely was super useful to me! Thank you so much for the information and for clarifying that for me. That is definitely the answer I was looking for! I was searching online last night for an answer and finally found your post that confirmed my suspicions about the LSI SAS 1 backplane.

I am glad that things worked out for you and you were able to figure out what was wrong! That is one of the most frustrating things troubleshooting things when you know everything *should* be working.


I have one more question if that is not too much trouble. Do these backplanes support SATA drives as well? Are you using SATA drives or SAS drives? I know they definitely support SAS drives and the manual for them says that is supports SATA drives. But the Supermicro SC836 chassis manual states that the BPN-SAS2-836EL (LSI SAS2x28) only supports SAS drives even though all other data I've read says they support both SATA and SAS drives. Also the picture you posted seems to show that both drive types would be supported (but not at the same time of course)

Thank you again!

 

[Chuckleb]

Yes, SAS is backwards compatible to SATA and we run hundreds of SATA everywhere. The website says SAS or Enterprise SATA recommended. NAS drives work fine, desktop drives can have compatibility with the chassis and LSI cards. That picture had a SATA and SAS drive.

 

[TubaMT]

Yes, SAS is backwards compatible to SATA and we run hundreds of SATA everywhere. The website says SAS or Enterprise SATA recommended. NAS drives work fine, desktop drives can have compatibility with the chassis and LSI cards. That picture had a SATA and SAS drive.

Awesome! Thank you for confirming that! That's what I thought but I just wanted to make sure. You have been super helpful! Thank you so much!

And so you can mix and match SAS and SATA drives on the same backplane? I thought that was a no-no, though I don't see why it would be. And it doesn't seem to be since you are running them without a problem it sounds like.

 

[Chuckleb]

Yes you can mix and match on the same backplane. When you create arrays in the raid card, you want the entire array to be on the same drive if possible. We have a few systems that are SAS primarily, with SATA expansions.

 

[TubaMT]

Thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise! I'm new to servers and am planning my first SOHO server build so all of the info your shared has been immensely helpful! Thank you again!

 

[Chuntzu]

Don't suppose you have any info on updating SAS backplane firmware for the supermicro LSI sas2 2x28

 

[Chuckleb]

Unfortunately I do not. I was going to try to get updated firmware for the SAS backplane but the boards were discontinued.

FWIW, here is the response that I got for the SAS backplanes:

The latest release backplane firmware was release on 2010. LSI has discontinue the SASx36 chipset 3 years ago. The BPN-SAS-826-7EL1 and BPN-SAS-846-7EL1 only support up to 3Gb/s data transfer rate.

 

[Chuntzu]

Thanks for the info, good to know that about the firmware

 

[admiraljkb]

Hey guys, I stumbled into this thread. Good info for those trying to assemble home and lab servers with older Supermicro parts in particular.

Looks like 12.15.0-0205 for the 9260's is supposed to fix the problems with the expanders with the LSI SASx28 chipset. They had a warning about using SAS1 expanders for the last couple of weeks on the "189" firmware and indicated a new version would release shortly to resolve. "205" has released, and LSI's warning is now gone from the download page. I *think* thats a good sign. I do have a SAS1 expander (SAS-836EL1) , but haven't had a chance to shuffle equipment around to test it yet.

LSI wasn't nice enough to spell out what the fix is for the old expanders, so I'm *guessing* it might be related to one or both of the following:
SCGCQ00714186 - (Closed) - HDD Drive Speed shows as "UNKNOWN" in MSM with 9240/9260/9270
SCGCQ00775246 - (Closed) - After Liberator FW update from 4.11 to 4.12 and a subsequent power cycle the MegaRAID card will stop with discovery error message

Readme:
Download Agreement

Firmware:
MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i

Clarification - just in case - the maximum speed for SATA on the SAS1 expander is still 1.5GB/s. The new firmware doesn't "fix" that, but is supposed to fix the reliability issues with using SATA drives on the backplane. Or at least I think it is supposed to, but LSI wasn't totally forthcoming on the bug list.

 

[MiniKnight]

@admiraljkb great info thanks for posting. I hope you stick around.

 

[admiraljkb]

@MiniKnight NP - I've lurked around for a while. This was a time I could contribute back.

I forgot to put above that the 9240's (like the IBM M1015) also got the same update:
MegaRAID SAS 9240-8i

 

[Guillermo]

if anybody cares, here is my setup and findings
I bought a Supermicro with a SAS1 backplane
Supermicro 846E1 R900B X8DTE F 2X L5630 Quad Core Xeon CPU's 32GB Mem 24x Trays | eBay
I am using an LSI 9261 with the latest firmware (the one posted by @admiraljkb)
LSI LSI9261 9261 8i 8 Port 6GB s SATA SAS RAID PCI E x8 Lane Magaraid | eBay

I have 10 SATA, 6tb HGST NAS, drives and all of them are connected to 3Gbps.

I do not have any of the problems @Chuckleb reported. LSI controller doesn't report any errors.

I am using the system as a NAS server to store my files.