Ode to the Dell C2100/FS12-TY

Joined
Feb 2, 2016
Messages
574
Which do you recomend H200 or M1015 for C2100 and 12 x 3.5" drives?

Either. They both use the same chipset. Buy whichever is less expensive or more easily sourced.

Cheers,
Matt
 

Pascal666

Dabbler
Joined
Jan 28, 2018
Messages
11
1. Which RAID cotroller do you recomend PERC H200 PERC H700 or anything else? Should I flash fw?
The c2100 has a dedicated connector for the 85M9R so it will not use up one of your two pci-e slots.
 

Pascal666

Dabbler
Joined
Jan 28, 2018
Messages
11
Could someone with the mezzanine HBA post some pictures and measurements of the plastic standoffs it connects to the main board with? Mine didn't come with any and I want to see if I can get a friend of mine to 3d model some for me so that I can order some 3d printed copies.

Unless you guys know of a place I can buy the standoff directly but I would've thought that they would be uncommon or specific to the board.
I'm in the same boat. Did you find a solution?
 

RickH

Explorer
Joined
Oct 31, 2014
Messages
61
The c2100 has a dedicated connector for the 85M9R so it will not use up one of your two pci-e slots.

Is it possible to crossflash the 85M9R card? In Dell's "R" series servers with the 'mini' HBA / RAID cards in the dedicated storage slots you can't crossflash them - as soon as you wipe out the original BIOS / Firmware the server throws an error that there's an unsupported card in the storage slot.

I've avoided the 'Mezzanine' cards in the past for this reason; but it would be nice to free up one of the PCI slots on the riser card if this works...
 

Pascal666

Dabbler
Joined
Jan 28, 2018
Messages
11
Is it possible to crossflash the 85M9R card?
Working fine for me. I flashed it with 9211-8i. Some useful commands:
sas2flsh -listall
sas2flsh -list
sas2flsh -c 1 -list # the '-c 1' tells it to look at the 2nd adapter. Add that to the below if necessary.
sas2flsh -o -e 6 # only needed if crossflashing
sas2flsh -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
 

Antex

Cadet
Joined
Jan 30, 2019
Messages
1
Hello, guys.
I've been trying to get my C2100 server to work properly for half a year now.
The problem is that it does not detect any disks.

So, i tested two PERC h700.
Two backplanes 9NXC7.
Cables that i used: HF1HC.

Nothing helps, I tried many different disks and jumpers combinations. Not detected.

But, if i use SFF-8087 to 4 SATA cable (from aliexpress), it works, can detect a disks. But without backplane.
I read above that backplane 9NXC7 works only with a certain cables 5X8NH. Is it true? How it's possible? Its just a wires and two connectors :)
 

Pascal666

Dabbler
Joined
Jan 28, 2018
Messages
11
Two backplanes 9NXC7.
Cables that i used: HF1HC.
You must use 5X8NH cables with the 9NXC7 backplane. HF1HC has the same connectors but different wiring.
 

Daisuke

Contributor
Joined
Jun 23, 2011
Messages
1,038
Hi @Mirfster or anyone familiar, I just purchased this C2100:

Any suggestions related to firmware upgrades? My goal is to connect the NAS with an Ethernet cable to my current home router, like I currently do with my old FreeNAS server.
 
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Redcoat

MVP
Joined
Feb 18, 2014
Messages
2,924
Welcome to the wonderful world of the FS12-TY C2100. I cannot give you contemporaneous info as my Dell was lost to water damage in a mid-August fire - however, I do recall that this thread contained "all there is to know" about BIOS versions for your new machine (among a lot of other very good information). The BIOS you will use will seem "quite old" - as I recall there was only one version after it, but you'll need the earlier one in order to have tolerable sound levels from the fans. The right version is clear from the posts in this thread.
 
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Redcoat

MVP
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Feb 18, 2014
Messages
2,924
I found my notes on my FS12-ty C2100 - BIOS version C99Q3B16, BMC Firmware 1.66.65092, was acknowledged best combination, particularly with fan speed to keep the noise to an acceptable level. These are confirmed in post 28 of this thread (which is the one from which I purchased mine).

When addressing BMC via browser you have the usual Java hoops to jump though to use the remote console and there are a few small glitches with the BMC page menus. These latter you can overcome by typing in the desired URL shown in the location tip to make the page-to-page switch.
 

Redcoat

MVP
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Feb 18, 2014
Messages
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I'm out of info - nothing more in my notes. I see the reference though is to a driver, not a firmware revision per se. An updated 1.67 driver allows a fixed IP address for the BMC apparently. I always had that capability...
But, reading it again, it does look like this driver updates the firmware.
 
Joined
Apr 8, 2017
Messages
10
Working fine for me. I flashed it with 9211-8i. Some useful commands:
sas2flsh -listall
sas2flsh -list
sas2flsh -c 1 -list # the '-c 1' tells it to look at the 2nd adapter. Add that to the below if necessary.
sas2flsh -o -e 6 # only needed if crossflashing
sas2flsh -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom

Can you provide some more information such as... where to download this firmware and explain a little bit more on which each step is doing? I'd love to be able to keep the C2100... but I need to add a Quadro P2000 GPU for Transcoding and I already have the 2nd PCI-e Slot filled with a 10Gbe SFP+. If I can get rid of my PCI-e HBA then I'm golden! So please as detailed as you can get would be extremely helpful!


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
 

RickH

Explorer
Joined
Oct 31, 2014
Messages
61
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!
 

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Joined
Apr 8, 2017
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@RickH

Thanks for this! I'm going to give this a shot! The other good news for me here is that I think the card I currently have in the server uses the same SAS connector off the card so I should just be able to unplug and re-route the cables.


The Network Card:
The server only has 2 PCI-E slots... How certain are you that it should work? I would love to get both slots back! I already have a SFP+ DAC and those cards are not terribly priced considering the alternative... buying a new server. As for the 2nd PCI slot (if thatNIC really will work) I would like to get a PCI-e M2 card and allocate that storage to the VMs. Something like this: https://www.newegg.com/startech-com-model-pex8m2e2-pci-express-to-m-2-card/p/N82E16815158465

Do you happen to know if FreeNAS recognize those?

The MAIN goal was to free 1 slot so that I can put an Nvidia P2000 GPU in there and enable hardware transcoding in Plex. IIRC they are having some challenges with FreeBSD and the Nvidia driver (It will use QuickSync but not the GPU). The current solution is to create a Linux/Windows VM and install Plex in that and enable HW Transcoding which is likely what I will do.


EDIT: Apparently FreeNAS does not support Nvidia hardware transcoding and has not made a formal commitment, Looks like I may have to switch to UnRaid... :(
 
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Joined
Apr 8, 2017
Messages
10
I just wanted to confirm that I was able to get the SAS card flashed and it worked perfectly, thanks again!

I had to make a choice for the hardware transcoding with my Nvidia P2000 so I moved over to UnRaid for the time being. The 10G NIC works with the DAC cable on UnRaid which I believe is based on Ubuntu, I would imagine it works with FreeNAS as well. The card NIC was around 60-80$ on eBay and the DAC was about 15$ on Amazon for my Ubiquiti Unifi Switch so under 100$ for 10G networking and I saved a PCI-e slot, which I can now use for another HBA and get everything off the SATA II onboard controller. (much more important for UnRaid, hardly noticeable with FreeNAS).
 
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