X9DRH-7F onboard LSI 2208 16 drive limit

[JSchuricht]

I picked up a Supermicro X9DRH-7F recently. It's going in a SC216 24 bay chassis with a SAS 2 expander backplane. Supermicro lists the X9DRH-7F as having a 16 drive limit. I may not ever hit 16+ drives in this system but I was planning on trying a few of the flash guides to attempt unlocking the drive limit so I have the option in the future.

I am not sure if I just got really lucky or if I am missing something. I am just testing at this point and have not flashed anything yet but it looks like this board doesn't have the 16 drive limit.

I put 21 random drives in the chassis, all 21 show up in firmware and MSM shows cachecade 2.0 pro enabled.

Are there certain circumstances where drives over the 1st 16 wouldn't show up, maybe an error generated or did I just score a rare board with an unlocked 2208 that I shouldn't touch the firmware on?

 

[i386]

Supermicro lists the X9DRH-7F as having a 16 drive limit.

Where exactly?

On the website supermicro lists this:
>6. 8x SATA2 and 2x SATA3 ports
>7. 8x SAS2 ports from Broadcom 2208

The broadcom (raid) controller should work without problems with an expander and more than 16 devices.

 

[JSchuricht]

Where exactly?

On the website supermicro lists this:
>6. 8x SATA2 and 2x SATA3 ports
>7. 8x SAS2 ports from Broadcom 2208

The broadcom (raid) controller should work without problems with an expander and more than 16 devices.

Sorry, this is strictly with the 2208 controller. On the Supermicro site it says "Supports up to 16 devices as default, more HDD devices support is also available as an option *"

 

[i386]

On the Supermicro site it says "Supports up to 16 devices as default, more HDD devices support is also available as an option *"

That's another mainboard, X9DRL-7F, not X9DRH-7F like the title of this thread.

I'm a little bit confused becuase it's the same controller in both skus and it's a raid controller that supports raid 5 & 6 (specs from broadcom).

 

[JSchuricht]

Fixed the link, its the same for the X9DRH-7F.

 

[JSchuricht]

Some OEM controllers are not the same as a regular LSI/Broadcom controller. I am just trying to figure out if this one is unrestricted before I play with the firmware or if there is something I am missing.