Flashing the Dell Perc h310 problem

[Misterdjus]

Hi Guys,

I have a problem flashing my H310. I wanted to flash it to IT mode, and i followed this guide:

https://techmattr.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/sas-hba-crossflashing-or-flashing-to-it-mode/

Only little problem is i have a slightly different card: http://store.flagshiptech.com/dell-poweredge-perc-h310-mini-mono-raid-controller-6gb-s-k09cj/
It is situated in my Dell Poweredge r720xd.

But that should not be a problem though.

I started to flash and now i ran into a problem, which i can not bypass, and i hope some more experienced flashers here can help me out.

I first booted into Freedos and started the flash proces as discribed:

1. megacli -AdpAllInfo -aAll -page 20 (I did this and i have the adress writen down)
2. megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin (This command failed as discribed)
3. megarec -cleanflash 0 (This worked out and the card was cleared)
4. Reboot the system
5. sas2flsh -o -f 6GBPSAS.FW (this is where the problems started)

At point 5 i got an error message that the card was not recognised. I thought it would be a good idea to reboot again. Maybe something went wrong. Now when i try to boot i get the following message:

"Invalid PCIe card found in the Internal Storage slot!"
"System halted!"
http://imgur.com/EinmZJP

This message appeard before the boot options, so i am not able to boot from the usb disk again, wich makes is hard to flash :P. When i take the raid controller out, i am able to boot into the bios and/usb drive again, but i am unable to solve the flash issue because the card is out...

So it feels like i'm kinda stuck with a bricked raid controller... :/

Any ideas how to solve this? I read something about placing it in another slot, but because it's not a default card, i am unable to place it into another slot.

I hope you guys can help me and i don't need to buy a new controller. And if i do buy a new one i'm affraid to end up with the same situation...

 

[Misterdjus]

Little update. I still have support on my server, so i will be fixing a new raid controller. It just seems like the mini cards are not flashable... But now comes the question what to do next. It is not recommended to use a Dell Perc raid controller with individual disks:

• Dell PERC RAID controllers like the 5i (if you have to do RAID0 of individual disks you have failed to follow the "do not use hardware RAID" rule... that is NOT a JBOD. End of discussion.)

But i do have a perc in the Dell Poweredge 720xd. Do i just build a big pool with the raid controller. Because as written above, individual disks is not recommeded. Maybe the pool created by the raid controller will be a little less performing, but it will still be ok right?
Also i will be using raid instead of zfs then?

And will it even recognize the disk?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Following directions for flashing a different card from what you have seems like asking for trouble.

Maybe the pool created by the raid controller will be a little less performing, but it will still be ok right?

Wrong. It's not about performance, it's about the likelihood of data loss.

Don't use a hardware RAID card with FreeNAS, unless it has a true pass-through mode, or has been flashed to IT mode.

Note: PERC = PowerEdge RAID Controller, which is a large family of products. A PERC 5i is not much like a PERC H31o.

 

[jgreco]

Of course you can just build a big pool with the PERC RAID controller, but when you do, you'll need to select a different NAS package, because FreeNAS only supports ZFS, and that PERC will be a disaster waiting to happen when combined with ZFS.

There's a great sticky about the various LSI controllers, which many of the PERC controllers actually are. The 5/i is an ancient LSI 3Gbps controller of some sort, and is therefore a particularly poor choice even if you could get it flashed to a pure IT mode, which I'm vaguely skeptical about. I don't know anything about a mini H310, but if you've got support on the thing, try badgering Dell about how to flash it to IT mode.

Best solution is to see if you can get an actual LSI 9211-8i, any new cabling that might be required, and you'll be much less likely to end up drinking yourself to death.