Supermicro drive limit on oboard LSI Raid controllers.

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michathe

Active Member
Feb 25, 2016
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Hi there,

I just resently got a Supermicro X10DRH-CT with an LSI 3108 Onbord i also have a Board witch has a SMC2208 (LSI 2208) Controller onboard. Both Controllers are limitet to max 16 Drives.

(Supports up to 16 devices as default, more HDD devices support is also available as an option *)

Does anyone now if it is possible to overcome the Drive Limit on Supermicro onboard Raid Controllers?

Would it be Possible to Reflash the Controller with the original LSI Firmware?

(LSI 3108 has only 1GB cache the Supermicro Onbord has 2GB)

Best regards
 

j_h_o

Active Member
Apr 21, 2015
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California, US
This sounds like a limitation of the physical connector that is present on the board. Have you hooked up a SAS expander? You should be able to connect more drives with that in place.
 

michathe

Active Member
Feb 25, 2016
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No, the Controller has 2 Ports just like a normal LSI Card but you can only use the first 16 Drives on your Expander.
 

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
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Reviving this old thread. It looks Supermicro sas controllers has some kind of drive limit: AOC-S3108L-H8iR | Add-on Cards | Accessories | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.

This does not apply to all SAS controllers from SuperMicro:

I found out that the onboard SAS3 controller for x10DRH-C motherboard have this limitation as OP points out and it was quite surprising. I assume this is some sort of artificial limitation enforced by the firmware. Does anyone know if this is correct? Can this limitation be removed with a license?
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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What are you trying to do?
If I remeber correctly microchip & broadcom controllers don't allow to create suicide volumes like 16+ hdds raid 0 in the gui, but can do it in the cli tools.
 

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
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I am not trying to create a RAID array with 16 drives.

As OP called out and captured in Supermicro documentation, some SAS controllers have 16 drive limit. These controller do not accept the 17th drive and gives an error on them if you add 17th drive through SAS expander, like the ones come in Supermicro chassis. I am trying to learn more about this limit and if there is a way to remove it.
 

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
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Newly added drives are not supported:

1621575890607.png


The error message says this:

92 [Warning, 1] 2021-05-20, 22:37:24 Controller ID: 0 PD is not supported: Port 4 - 7:1:11 1861
247 [Information, 0] 2021-05-20, 22:37:24 Controller ID: 0 Device inserted Device Type: Disk Device Id: 44 1860
91 [Information, 0] 2021-05-20, 22:37:24 Controller ID: 0 PD inserted: Port 4 - 7:1:11 1859

These drives will work fine if I remove one of the existing 16 drives.
 

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
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No it is not related position. Let me break one of my arrays and and remove the drives from other position and newly added drives will start to work.
 

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
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I removed one of the arrays and set of disks and now there is no warning on these positions. The issue is basically the drive limit on the onboard sas controller.
 

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Last edited:

tjk

Active Member
Mar 3, 2013
481
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43
Hi there,

I just resently got a Supermicro X10DRH-CT with an LSI 3108 Onbord i also have a Board witch has a SMC2208 (LSI 2208) Controller onboard. Both Controllers are limitet to max 16 Drives.

(Supports up to 16 devices as default, more HDD devices support is also available as an option *)

Does anyone now if it is possible to overcome the Drive Limit on Supermicro onboard Raid Controllers?

Would it be Possible to Reflash the Controller with the original LSI Firmware?

(LSI 3108 has only 1GB cache the Supermicro Onbord has 2GB)

Best regards
Did you ever find a work around here? Or did you replace the controller?