Confused about that LSI card? Join the crowd ...

[Z300M]

Greetings all. I'm currently in the process of assembling the parts for my first FreeNAS box, following some of the stickies here. The part I am most unsure about is the controller card, but I understand the M1015 is the way to go in general. I wanted to minimize the risk of buying a fake, and so I picked up two of these units refurbed from what looks like a reputable vendor. Two questions:

1) any issues that you can see with these? http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-SERVERA...D-CONTROLLER-CARD-46M0861-LOW-P-/191189468183?

2) can someone give me the link to the proper breakout cables for SATA drives?

Many thanks.

These are what I bought a few weeks back:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-LSI-3Wa...t=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item58951e73ef

They took their time shipping them, but they arrived within two days from shipping.

 

[ArseneLupin]

Greetings, all

I am trying to confirm if either the IBM M1015 and/or the IBM M1115 will work with the Supermicro X10SLA-F server board. If it makes any difference, I have a Xeon E3-1220V3 installed in this board, and 32 GB of Samsung ECC 1600 memory.

As I have heard these IBM cards may not run on some motherboards, would appreciate it if someone can confirm they have either of these cards combination runningwith the X10SLA-F mobo.

If I posted this in the wrong forum, forgive my “noobiness”.

Thanks

 

[jgreco]

I cannot recall hearing about compatibility issues between the M1015 and any normal Supermicro board.

Re: M1115 see

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/m1015-vs-m1115.15799/

 

[ArseneLupin]

Thanks for the quick response. I had already checked the thread you indicate, but hadn't seen a specific reference to my exact motherboard p/n.
Before I posted, I ran a search both at the FreeNAS forum site and in Google with the mobo part number and the IBM cards part numbers, to see if anyone had posted anything in this regard, and came empty handed.
There is in all likelihood going to be no problem, I just wanted some confirmation. From reading old posts it appears you could have these cards for a pittance not long ago, but their recent popularity has made them a bit expensive.
Thanks!!

 

[LAYGO]

Thanks for the quick response. I had already checked the thread you indicate, but hadn't seen a specific reference to my exact motherboard p/n.
Before I posted, I ran a search both at the FreeNAS forum site and in Google with the mobo part number and the IBM cards part numbers, to see if anyone had posted anything in this regard, and came empty handed.
There is in all likelihood going to be no problem, I just wanted some confirmation. From reading old posts it appears you could have these cards for a pittance not long ago, but their recent popularity has made them a bit expensive.
Thanks!!

It wouldn't hurt to try. And cross flashing can be reverted (get the IBM bios/firmware too).

I think the issues were that you couldn't flash in DOS depending on the motherboard, not necessarily that it wouldn't run. Since I was using an AMD based one, I didn't think it would affect me, but it did. Flashing from UEFI Shell was successful.

Try it & report back.

 

[ArseneLupin]

Hey, fellows, sorry it took a while. Bought an M1015 in eBay, flashed it to IT mode (had to use the UEFI shell, the flash process kept failing otherwise), installed it in my Supermicro X10SLA-F server board and moved all my drives over to it.

Not only it works beautifully, but the J-Perf tool now reports a network speed of 112 MBs versus the former 107 MBs using the on-board SATA controller. Very happy with the upgrade.

 

[jgreco]

That's pretty typical. It's not always BETTER - many boards now have great SATA ports - but I've never heard it bein' slower! ;)

 

[ArseneLupin]

Well, yeah, but my Supermicro motherboard is the newest they have, which came to the market in late 2013, and has SATA6 support. Yet this M1015 card, with a manufacture date in early 2010, provides better performance. While I am happy to extract every bit of additional network speed I can get, I did not expect this from what should be old technology compared to this "brand new" Supermicro server board. Oh, well.

 

[jgreco]

The M1015 is not a SATA controller - it's a SAS HBA. The difference between a car-based SUV and a truck-based SUV. They look similar but under the hood, totally different class of vehicle.

 

[ArseneLupin]

Thanks, jgreco.

 

[Ray Milyard]

Thinking about buying one of these today to add to my Lenovo TS130 server. I am new to FreeNAS so I would like to know WHICH one should I buy today? I do need the 8 SATA ports. Also if I need to flash it is it easy or should I look for one done already?

 

[cyberjock]

Uhh.. the M1015, just like the first post says. What do you mean which one?!

 

[DannyKlenz]

On ebay today: NEW Dell SAS/SATA 2.0 6Gb/s 8-Port 2x4 PCI-e HBA LSISAS2008-IT

View: http://www.ebay.com/itm/201130930705?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649


These are already flashed to IT mode and are going for $79.99 with free shipping.

 

[jgreco]

And they're sold by txcesssurplus, a well known Dell surplus vendor. I would not hesitate to buy one from them (and have bought other items from them before). They're not likely to be fakes.

Nice find.

 

[DannyKlenz]

I plan on installing mine into a HP ML350 G5. Hopefully it does not create a singularity.

 

[DannyKlenz]

View: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Dell-Perc-H310-8-Port-SATA-SAS-RAID-Controller-with-Cables-/281415014686?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item4185a4591e


Also based on the SAS2008. The dell cards little trickier to flash. I purchased one of the cards that i posted previously and was able to flash it to LSI-IT firmware after some searching on google. Its now working perfectly hooked up to 4x2TB Wd Reds and 2x Fujitsu 15k 72gb drives.

Another option is the Dell Perc H200. It seems everyone knows about the IBM cards and now prices have gone up however the Dell cards can still be found for a reasonable price.

Edit: txcesssurplus has put up another auction for the same card as before. Same price:

View: http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Dell-SAS-SATA-2-0-6Gb-s-8-Port-2x4-PCI-e-HBA-LSISAS2008-IT-/121414638037?pt=US_Server_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item1c44e059d5

 

[Fraoch]

If I already have enough ports and they're good ports (off the Intel C224 chipset on a Supermicro X10SLM-F) do I need an HBA card? Does it provide any benefits or just more ports?

The FreeNAS guide seems to imply it does provide benefits:

"If you need reliable disk alerting, immediate reporting of a failed drive, and or swapping, use a fully
manageable hardware RAID controller such as a LSI MegaRAID controller or a 3Ware twa-compatible
controller. The current FreeBSD ZFS implementation will not notice that a drive is gone until you
reboot or put the volume on high load."

and points to this thread, but the start of this thread doesn't mention anything about these increased and desirable capabilities.

I don't mind spending money on one, I'm just wondering if there are any benefits.

Thank you.

 

[Ericloewe]

If I already have enough ports and they're good ports (off the Intel C224 chipset on a Supermicro X10SLM-F) do I need an HBA card? Does it provide any benefits or just more ports?

The FreeNAS guide seems to imply it does provide benefits:

"If you need reliable disk alerting, immediate reporting of a failed drive, and or swapping, use a fully
manageable hardware RAID controller such as a LSI MegaRAID controller or a 3Ware twa-compatible
controller. The current FreeBSD ZFS implementation will not notice that a drive is gone until you
reboot or put the volume on high load."

and points to this thread, but the start of this thread doesn't mention anything about these increased and desirable capabilities.

I don't mind spending money on one, I'm just wondering if there are any benefits.

Thank you.

No benefits if you have enough ports for all drives.

 

[Fraoch]

OK, thanks, but I'll have to find something else to spend the money on. ;)

 

[jeatalong]

I am currently running a lsi1068e HBA with 4 *2TB WD RE4 drives. Currently I am getting a very slow 25megabytes/sec transfer via a CIFS share. I have read that this is due to the particular model of the HBA card I am using. What could I expect if I used compared to LSI 9211-8i equivalent?