On the topic of flashing, I came across a dual 10Gbe Mezzene slot card. But it appears it is Fibre Channel. Does anyone know if that will work as a TCP SFP+ Nic? Part - Dell 1YT6X
That particular Mezzanine card should work as a 10GbE SFP+ network card - but unless you have a major need for an extra PCI-E card slot, there are a lot cheaper ways to get 10GbE on your server. I don't personally have experience with that card, but it should show up as a standard NIC in FreeNAS.
Rick, Did it work? Can you provide a decent DIY and location to download the file that you used?
The 85M9R Mezzanine SAS adapter works great and crossflashing was no problem.
This is my standard 'go-to' guide for crossflashing:
https://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/
It's been almost a year since I put my card in, but if I remember correctly the crossflash process was pretty much the same as any other card. I would recommend pulling any standard PCI-E SAS card out of the chassis for the crossflash procedure as it can be a little difficult to determine which card is which.
After the crossflash the card reports itself as a SAS9211-8i
Code:
root@storage04:~ # sas2flash -c 0 -list
LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 16.00.00.00 (2013.03.01)
Copyright (c) 2008-2013 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved
Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B1)
Controller Number : 0
Controller : SAS2008(B1)
PCI Address : 00:01:00:00
SAS Address : 6c93b83-1-ea2a-9c11
NVDATA Version (Default) : 14.01.00.08
NVDATA Version (Persistent) : 14.01.00.08
Firmware Product ID : 0x2213 (IT)
Firmware Version : 20.00.04.00
NVDATA Vendor : LSI
NVDATA Product ID : SAS9211-8i
BIOS Version : N/A
UEFI BSD Version : N/A
FCODE Version : N/A
Board Name : SAS9211-8i
Board Assembly : N/A
Board Tracer Number : N/A
Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
Exiting SAS2Flash.
The only 'gotcha' I see listed in my notes for this card is that sometimes the
megarec -cleanflash 0 command can fail out between 50-75% during the crossflash process. If this happens try running
sas2flsh -o -e 6 which should wipe the flash memory on the card.
As a side-note, I don't install the LSI BIOS back onto any of the LSI cards I use for my FreeNAS servers.
A .zip file with all of the tools I use for crossflashing is attached - you'll need to unpack this onto a DOS bootable USB drive - for this card use the 2118it.bin firmware file.
Good luck!