SOLVED Good source for non-fake M1015s?

bigphil

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I believe some of the OEM SAS2308 cards like the HP H220 have a slightly more involved flash process (there's an "intermediary" firmware that needs to be flashed) but I don't think it's significantly more difficult than the SAS2008-based M1015 or H200.

Not true in my experience. I've flashed 6 H220's to the latest LSI 9207-8i firmware and all required a single step. All came directly from HP and were running HP firmware. By FAR the easiest flashing card I've seen.

using a p05 sas2flsh.exe: "sas2flsh -o -f 9207-8.bin -b mptsas2.rom" and then press Y when it asks you to flash anyways. Done. After that you can confirm the fw version of the card with the p20 sas2flsh: "sas2flsh -list" or "sas2flsh -listall"
 
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I use two like this in my 24 bay chassis:

SAS Expander: IBM (46m0997) ServeRAID Expansion Adapter 16-port SAS Expander - - US $15.88
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192326557905
This specific eBay item is from China. Should that be a concern with SAS expanders, as it is with HBAs?

Is there a guide somewhere that might help decipher which SAS expander make and models are most suitable, and which ones are not suitable? My Googling hasn't struck gold on this question yet.
 
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IMO the Intel RES2SV240 is one of the best out there, LSI chip, molex or PCIe powered, but not the cheapest one, HP is cheap but limited to SATA2 if used with SATA disks (and if you get one with an older firmware it will only link at SATA 1.5Gbps with SATA disks), no personal experience with the IBM ones, but a user had some issues with them recently.
 

Chris Moore

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This specific eBay item is from China. Should that be a concern with SAS expanders, as it is with HBAs?
Many of the devices that are marked as a brand like IBM or HP are coming out of systems that have been sent for recycling and it is simply taken out of a server that has been decommissioned. I don't think there is enough money involved to make it worth while to counterfeit when there are massive numbers of these that are being taken out of servers that are end-of-life. It is a different question when it is being advertised as new and they want significant money for it. Then it might be worth making fake ones, but I don't think that is likely with this kind of item. More likely it is out of a sweatshop where the workers are paid pennies a day to disassemble servers so they can be parted out.
 

Chris Moore

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Many of the devices that are marked as a brand like IBM or HP are coming out of systems that have been sent for recycling and it is simply taken out of a server that has been decommissioned. I don't think there is enough money involved to make it worth while to counterfeit when there are massive numbers of these that are being taken out of servers that are end-of-life.
I ordered two of the IBM 46m0997 SAS Expander cards. It'll be a few weeks before they arrive from China, and probably a few more weeks before I've done proper comparative testing against the M1015 + LSI 3008 combination.
 

Stux

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Possibly, there has to be a valid reason, if not it would be like closing down two lanes on a four-lane highway and expect more traffic to flow through, but continuing the analogy, as long a two lanes are enough for the current traffic, it won't cause a slow down either.

The analogy could be like having 2 4 lane highways ending at a traffic light controlled junction, rather than a single 4 lane ;)
 

Yorick

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Many of the devices that are marked as a brand like IBM or HP are coming out of systems that have been sent for recycling and it is simply taken out of a server that has been decommissioned. I don't think there is enough money involved to make it worth while to counterfeit when there are massive numbers of these that are being taken out of servers that are end-of-life.

Necro'ing this. I just bought from that seller in HK, "jiawen2018". Advertised was a new M1015, what I got was an "IBM 6Gb SAS Performance optimized HBA" (cousin of the M1015 that shipped with IT firmware) with LSI P10 IT Firmware. Flashed easily to P20 via EFI.

I concur. These are likely sweatshop pulls being sold as "New" rather than "Refurbished", not knock-offs.
 
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