Great motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F

[panz]

I just replaced the seventh M500: all were in some Windows 7 workstations as system disks, encrypted with Truecrypt.

I have approximately 20 M4 (two years ago production) that are working flawlessly with the same setup (Win7 Pro 64, system disk, Truecrypt), even in some laptops. No problems at all with the M4s!

 

[mw2014]

Thank you for the hardware list.

I like the ability to have 14 SATA ports.
I was thinking about using the Supermicro X10SL7-F motherboard but read somewhere that it needs to be flashed to IT mode (don't know what this means).
Are you using the board as stock/unmodified? If it needs to be flashed, is there a detailed instruction somewhere?

Thanks

 

[IonutZ]

mw2014, I did not flash it, I left it stock. Can you link to where you read that?

 

[Ericloewe]

Thank you for the hardware list.

I like the ability to have 14 SATA ports.
I was thinking about using the Supermicro X10SL7-F motherboard but read somewhere that it needs to be flashed to IT mode (don't know what this means).
Are you using the board as stock/unmodified? If it needs to be flashed, is there a detailed instruction somewhere?

Thanks

If you'd kept reading, you'd know these LSI controllers have several modes. IT is the "dumb" one that just exposes everything to the OS. Furthermore, its version must match the driver version (currently P16), so knowing how to flash it is a requirement.

Fortunately for you, there are guides.

http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/

You'll need to use the EFI shell version of the tool, so make changes accordingly.

http://www.0x00.to/post/2013/04/07/Flash-IBM-ServeRAID-M1015-to-LSI9211-8i-with-UEFI-mainboard

This one will guide you a bit on that front.

 

[jgreco]

"IT" means "Initiator/Target". "IR" means "Integrated RAID". HTH.

 

[IonutZ]

So who cares, you can use any RAID card or HBA as simple connections for the drives. FreeBSD itself runs the raid, I don't understand why one would flash?

 

[mjws00]

It's all about stability and predictability. ZFS functions at the lowest level it can, even to the point of acting as "controller cache". Raid drivers in IR mode can run into issues when both the firmware and the software are competing at that level. Basically they fight and can perform poorly, in other cases we lose functionality such as SMART.

In a perfect world Freebsd drivers would play nicely with all lsi firmware versions. In reality we get hit with glitches and instability when driver versions are mismatched. So since the whole intent of ZFS is to optimize data integrity, we take the step to ensure drivers don't mess that up. Yes there are other combinations that appear to work, and some even do work. However there have been enough problems to check and prompt on install in 9.3. In addition according to cyberjock, one of the first things LSI is going to tell you to do when asking for support at an enterprise level is to match those versions.

tl;dr FreeBSD drivers aren't perfect. They work best when matched with the firmware they were written for.

 

[Ericloewe]

It's all about stability and predictability. ZFS functions at the lowest level it can, even to the point of acting as "controller cache". Raid drivers in IR mode can run into issues when both the firmware and the software are competing at that level. Basically they fight and can perform poorly, in other cases we lose functionality such as SMART.

In a perfect world Freebsd drivers would play nicely with all lsi firmware versions. In reality we get hit with glitches and instability when driver versions are mismatched. So since the whole intent of ZFS is to optimize data integrity, we take the step to ensure drivers don't mess that up. Yes there are other combinations that appear to work, and some even do work. However there have been enough problems to check and prompt on install in 9.3. In addition according to cyberjock, one of the first things LSI is going to tell you to do when asking for support at an enterprise level is to match those versions.

tl;dr FreeBSD drivers aren't perfect. They work best when matched with the firmware they were written for.

Seems to be LSI policy that newer releases aren't backward compatible. We'll just have to live with it.

 

[mw2014]

mw2014, I did not flash it, I left it stock. Can you link to where you read that?

I found the information suggesting the flash to IT. It is in FreeNAS Hardware recommendations. https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/
While looking I also found a post in the forum, https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/supermicro-x10sl7-f.14105/page-6. jyavenard flashed his board and compared it to a non flashed board and ,if I'm reading everything correctly, he didn't see any difference.

 

[cyberjock]

Yes, jyavenard did say he didn't see any difference. That doesn't make it smart though. If IR mode does things like enable write cache or something that could spell problems.

For all the reasons we recommend IT mode, it's still *highly* recommended you use IT mode over IR mode. Just because things look okay on the surface doesn't mean they are. Just ask all the Realtek NIC users that say that their NIC works fine until it just stops working suddenly. ;)

 

[mw2014]

Yes, jyavenard did say he didn't see any difference. That doesn't make it smart though. If IR mode does things like enable write cache or something that could spell problems.

For all the reasons we recommend IT mode, it's still *highly* recommended you use IT mode over IR mode. Just because things look okay on the surface doesn't mean they are. Just ask all the Realtek NIC users that say that their NIC works fine until it just stops working suddenly. ;)

Thanks cyberjock.
I haven't built a computer from scratch since the DOS days, so I am looking for this type of guidance. Will I have 14 SATA ports once it is flashed? Is there a link or site that has detailed instruction for flashing to IT mode?
The one I found was doing it on a Windows computer but didn't say how he got that far.

 

[cyberjock]

I'm not aware of any way to flash to IT mode from Windows. But the best guide I've seen is here: http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-m1015-part-1-started-lsi-92208i/

 

[IonutZ]

Would flashing to IT mode affect current configuration in IR mode? Or is it transparent to the OS... I don't wanna mess up a working production environment.

 

[mjws00]

It should be transparent. Heh. Not sure you could get me to flash something that is rock solid in production. You pretty much have to put a gun to my head to even allow a reboot. ;) But I am cranky and paranoid. I would, however, match em up every time on the bench during burn in.

The other consideration is that you have a legit 2308 on that board. You aren't crossflashed, and the IR firmware is perfectly capable of passthrough mode including SMART etc. So we don't really have statistically valid data, imho. We only know that IT mode is best practice, and mismatched versions can cause problems. It is also possible that LSI does its heaviest and most thorough testing on their IR drivers, assuming most will actually want features... not to just disable everything. We can only speculate.

I'm sure others will have stronger opinions than me. I hate disrupting rock solid systems. Especially with a flash (blech). For a client I would leave it, but keep it at top of mind. I'd catch the next one on the bench. :)

 

[IonutZ]

Word, how can I check versions / firmware to make sure they're matching?

 

[mjws00]

'dmesg' actually shows the firmware version and driver version used when it initializes the controller.

 

[IonutZ]

So I have to dmesg right after boot?

 

[mjws00]

Nope any old time. It will just show you what happened during boot. Looks like this:

Code:

mps0: <LSI SAS2008> port 0x4000-0x40ff mem 0xfd4fc000-0xfd4fffff,0xfd480000-0xfd4bffff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci3
mps0: Firmware: 14.00.01.00, Driver: 16.00.00.00-fbsd
mps0: IOCCapabilities: 1285c<ScsiTaskFull,DiagTrace,SnapBuf,EEDP,TransRetry,EventReplay,HostDisc>

As you can see... I have a rock solid system that I haven't updated the firmware on. ;) This one was missed on the bench. I do put my money where my mouth is. :)

 

[IonutZ]

Well I'm guessing that the kernel's buffer must have been cleared out since the boot because I can only see UP / DOWNs of my igbs and usb connects and disconnects from my kvm lol...

 

[mjws00]

I've never had it not work, sorry. Have to go WAY back in my log to hit it as well.

#tail -n 300 /var/log/messages

There is probably a fancy |grep or other bit a nix wizard can add... I can scroll fast ;)

#tail -n 300 /var/log/messages | grep mps