Unable to Create zpool Plus Other Odd behavior

[kr4m17]

So, I am trying to do a clean install and I am running into some very odd problems. Just about all of them are documented in threads individually, but it doesn't seem anyone is getting all of them together.

First... Hardware. It's a dual Xeon box. 24 GB RAM. Adaptec 5445 RAID controller in JBOD mode. Seagate disk (info below). Detailed information below...

System: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5520 @ 2.27GHz
Operating Sytem: FreeNAS-9.2.1.8-RELEASE-x64 (e625626)
Memory: 24492MB

More info on the RAID controller:
[root@storage02] ~# dmesg | grep -i Adaptec
aacu0: <Adaptec RAID 5445> mem 0xb1a00000-0xb1bfffff irq 24 at device 0.0 on pci2
aacu0: Adaptec 5445, aac driver 3.1.2-30035

More info on the disk:
[root@storage02] ~# dmesg | grep SEAGATE
da0: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da1: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da2: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da3: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da4: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da5: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da6: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da7: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da8: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da9: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da10: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da11: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da12: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da13: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
da14: <SEAGATE ST31000424SS 0006> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device

Below is a list of odd behavior I am seeing...

• Unable to create zpool (ZFS Volume). See file FreeNAS_error.txt attached.
• Disks showing up twice under "show disks". This problem is outlined in this thread. The circumstances around this happening is after I do full wipes of the disks, sometimes they are showing back up as doubles when they are fully zero/random'ed out.
• I can't do quick wipe's of the disks after they are partially configured by the ZFS Volume Manager. Despite the error attached, gpart show does in fact show slices... however the zpool is not being created. After I fully wipe the disk I can then quick wipe it. The error supplied is, "Error, failed to wipe da0: dd: /dev/da0: Operation not permitted" (this error can be viewed in the screenshot attached).
• In the View Disks tab, I noticed that the Serial number shows when I have whatever permissions are allowing me to quick-wipe a disk. When I can't quick wipe the disk the Serial Number field is blank (this behavior can be seen in the screenshot attached).

The configuration I am trying to accomplish is a single zpool with two raidz3 seven-disk configs, and using the 15th disk as a spare. I have zero/random'ed out the disks several times and have attempted basic ZFS Volume Manager as well as advanced. Each one errors out with a similar error as attached.

Any help would be appreciated, I have exhausted my knowledge and googling skills trying to figure out whats going on. The only thing I can think may be a possibility is that the driver pack from Adaptec is compatible with FreeBSD 9.2, but not FreeNAS 9.2. I have attached the driver I am attempting to use as well.

If anyone needs more detailed information, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you.

 

[cyberjock]

Sorry, but I tuned out the second you said you are using Adaptec. No Adaptec anyone has used in this forum has a JBOD mode. And no, doing individual RAID0s of the disks does NOT count as JBOD. ;)

So I'm inclined to start with "get rid of the unsupported controller". ;)

 

[kr4m17]

Would you like me to take a screenshot of my Adaptec controller's JBOD settings? I did not say RAID0, since that is not how it's configured. I said JBOD, since that's what it is.

 

[cyberjock]

How about you post the output of smartctl -a /dev/da(XX)? That's the true test whether its acting as an HBA or not. ;)

 

[kr4m17]

I will be honest, I don't know what you are looking for in this output... so let me know if it makes the cut.

[root@storage02] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da0
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE-p12 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

(pass0:aacp1:1:8:0): INQUIRY. CDB: 12 01 00 01 fc 00
(pass0:aacp1:1:8:0): CAM status: CCB request completed with an error
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: SEAGATE
Product: ST31000424SS
Revision: 0006
User Capacity: 999,643,152,384 bytes [999 GB]
Logical block size: 512 bytes
Rotation Rate: 7202 rpm
Serial number: 9WK3QNNS00000C15DHJA
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS
Local Time is: Fri Oct 24 16:11:49 2014 PDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Current Drive Temperature: 26 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 68 C

Manufactured in week 07 of year 2011
Specified cycle count over device lifetime: 10000
Accumulated start-stop cycles: 51
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime: 300000
Accumulated load-unload cycles: 51
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Vendor (Seagate) cache information
Blocks sent to initiator = 199198
Blocks received from initiator = 2052355256
Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 12252
Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 35789
Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 0

Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information
number of hours powered up = 16672.42
number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 59

Error counter log:
Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total
ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected
fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors
read: 99051 0 0 99051 99051 0.102 0
write: 0 0 0 0 0 1050.836 0

Non-medium error count: 0


[GLTSD (Global Logging Target Save Disable) set. Enable Save with '-S on']
No self-tests have been logged​

 

[cyberjock]

That is the output I was looking for, but it doesn't look like it should. Here's what mine looks like. Notice the differences.

[root@zuul] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da3 -q noserial
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE-p12 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: WDC WD60EFRX-68MYMN0
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity: 6,001,175,126,016 bytes [6.00 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: 5700 rpm
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: ACS-2, ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b
SATA Version is: SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Fri Oct 24 19:23:16 2014 CDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 6524) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 719) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x303d) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 197 192 021 Pre-fail Always - 9125
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 28
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 1778
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 28
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 27
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 34
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 119 112 000 Old_age Always - 33
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1739 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1691 -
# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1643 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1595 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1558 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1505 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1458 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1409 -
# 9 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 1404 -
#10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1361 -
#11 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1313 -
#12 Conveyance offline Completed without error 00% 47 -
#13 Extended captive Interrupted (host reset) 90% 47 -
#14 Extended captive Interrupted (host reset) 90% 47 -
#15 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 13 -
#16 Conveyance offline Completed without error 00% 0 -
#17 Short offline Completed without error 00% 0 -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.




The bold is my emphasis. That's the important info. Yours is conspicuously absent. No, your controller isn't appropriate. Now I'm curious about what the hell JBOD mode you are talking about. I had a 5445 and it got ebayed when I switched to FreeNAS because it didn't do JBOD. I'm wondering if its something new or what the story is.

In any case, it still doesn't passthrough SMART, so it's a fail.

 

[Ericloewe]

That is the output I was looking for, but it doesn't look like it should. Here's what mine looks like. Notice the differences.

[root@zuul] ~# smartctl -a /dev/da3 -q noserial
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE-p12 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: WDC WD60EFRX-68MYMN0
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity: 6,001,175,126,016 bytes [6.00 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: 5700 rpm
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: ACS-2, ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b
SATA Version is: SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Fri Oct 24 19:23:16 2014 CDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 6524) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 719) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x303d) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 197 192 021 Pre-fail Always - 9125
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 28
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 1778
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 28
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 27
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 34
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 119 112 000 Old_age Always - 33
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1739 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1691 -
# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1643 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1595 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1558 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1505 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1458 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1409 -
# 9 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 1404 -
#10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1361 -
#11 Short offline Completed without error 00% 1313 -
#12 Conveyance offline Completed without error 00% 47 -
#13 Extended captive Interrupted (host reset) 90% 47 -
#14 Extended captive Interrupted (host reset) 90% 47 -
#15 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 13 -
#16 Conveyance offline Completed without error 00% 0 -
#17 Short offline Completed without error 00% 0 -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.




The bold is my emphasis. That's the important info. Yours is conspicuously absent. No, your controller isn't appropriate. Now I'm curious about what the hell JBOD mode you are talking about. I had a 5445 and it got ebayed when I switched to FreeNAS because it didn't do JBOD. I'm wondering if its something new or what the story is.

In any case, it still doesn't passthrough SMART, so it's a fail.

Wasn't there talk about SAS drives having SMART output that looks pretty much like what kr4m17 posted? Those drives are SAS drives, and the most important parameters do seem to be present, in a rather different format from the SATA output.

 

[kr4m17]

I'll see if I can grab some info about the JBOD info for you, but it certainly has a JBOD mode.

This brings me back to a question in my original post... could this be a driver issue. If the drivers are not fully supported could that prevent the data you are looking for in that output from being passed along? Also, could that be causing the problems I am seeing? Perhaps I can do some more digging on the drivers.

If it turns out that your intuition is correct, what HBA would you recommend I look at? I need to find out what type of backplane exists in the chassis I have. It is a Corvil chassis, but in reality appears to be a modified SuperMicro box with 16 removable bays. I guess it's time to do some more digging on that as well.

 

[kr4m17]

Wasn't there talk about SAS drives having SMART output that looks pretty much like what kr4m17 posted? Those drives are SAS drives, and the most important parameters do seem to be present, in a rather different format from the SATA output.

If you have any suggestions on how I can dig a little bit deeper I would be happy to. Let me know what you are thinking and thank you for the input.

Thank you.

 

[cyberjock]

Wasn't there talk about SAS drives having SMART output that looks pretty much like what kr4m17 posted? Those drives are SAS drives, and the most important parameters do seem to be present, in a rather different format from the SATA output.

There was talk about it, but nobody could validate it. But the 3 SAS drives I checked all give output exactly like mine.

I do know that some brands of RAID controllers water down the SMART results to exactly what you see kr4m17 post.

There's 2 possibilities:

1. Some SAS drives don't provide the output and somehow (and I find this to be unlikely) that this one Adaptec does proper passthrough.
2. The Adaptec is just like every other Adaptec we've seen here. It's not true passthrough and its solely responsible for the changes.

Obviously this isn't a matter of who is telling the truth or lying. The facts are the facts. We just have to figure out what the "facts" are. I think the best way is to hook a drive up to the on-board controller and get SMART on that drive, then hook the same drive to the Adaptec and see what changes. Testing a SAS and a SATA drive in the same fashion would yield interesting results.

Ultimately, even *if* everything else seems to be okay, this controller is still going to be a mess to deal with. it has on-card RAM (256MB if I remember correctly) and that will really hurt pool performance. Write cache is going to kill the pool someday, etc. The card still isn't an HBA and there's a whole other list of problems that can result in data loss and poor performance.

BUT, the above test would still be interesting just for a data point.

 

[kr4m17]

There was talk about it, but nobody could validate it. But the 3 SAS drives I checked all give output exactly like mine.

I do know that some brands of RAID controllers water down the SMART results to exactly what you see kr4m17 post.

There's 2 possibilities:

1. Some SAS drives don't provide the output and somehow (and I find this to be unlikely) that this one Adaptec does proper passthrough.
2. The Adaptec is just like every other Adaptec we've seen here. It's not true passthrough and its solely responsible for the changes.

Obviously this isn't a matter of who is telling the truth or lying. The facts are the facts. We just have to figure out what the "facts" are. I think the best way is to hook a drive up to the on-board controller and get SMART on that drive, then hook the same drive to the Adaptec and see what changes. Testing a SAS and a SATA drive in the same fashion would yield interesting results.

Ultimately, even *if* everything else seems to be okay, this controller is still going to be a mess to deal with. it has on-card RAM (256MB if I remember correctly) and that will really hurt pool performance. Write cache is going to kill the pool someday, etc. The card still isn't an HBA and there's a whole other list of problems that can result in data loss and poor performance.

BUT, the above test would still be interesting just for a data point.

+1 on this test being a good idea. I do not, at the moment, have SAS cables to do the test with. I do have a test of my own, though. Doesn't accomplish everything you were worried about, but I think it will be informative. I am still concerned about drivers, I know for a fact that FreeBSD 9.2 has these drivers in working order released with the distro. I will go ahead and install FreeBSD 9.2 and then test if we get the same output from smartctl. This will, at the very least, eliminate a possible driver problem. At most, if we see what you consider to be proper output from the card, then we know the card is in fact operating in a suitable form of JBOD mode. Not as good as your test, but all I can think of with the resources I have available at the moment. I will update the thread later on tonight or tomorrow when I have time to install and test.

Thanks for your suggestion, it got me thinking at least.

 

[kr4m17]

I realize this portion of the conversation is dead, but I thought I would include this anyway.

 

[cyberjock]

I didn't consider that part dead, completely. I was hoping you'd post those screenshots.

See, my problem is that you're having to "create JBOD". That, by definition means it's not really a JBOD. A JBOD should be nothing more than an unconfigured disk. The fact that you have to "Create JBOD" tells me it's not truely a JBOD. JBODs should be controller agnostic. You put the disk on an Intel controller, a LSI, a Marvell, and it should "just work". But it doesn't. None of those require configuration to work in JBOD/HBA. No doubt something is being written to the drive to mark it as a JBOD, which means it's not a true JBOD.

I had a similar problem when experimenting with the Highpoint controllers. To Highpoint, a "JBOD" disk was a disk that had a partition table already on it that had a file system that the Highpoint recognized. Now for the kicker... it doesn't recognize FreeBSD swapspace or ZFS partitions. For the Highpoint card in particular I was testing there was basically 3 conditions the disk could be in; Legacy(disk passthrough), RAID(duh), and Unconfigured. Legacy required the recognized partition I described earlier. RAID was configured in the Highpoint controller itself. Unconfigured was anything that wasn't Legacy or RAID. Unconfigured disk are also unavailable to the OS. Highpoint had other downsides too. Zero SMART support except via their CLI (which made it the worst kind of 'bad' for FreeNAS). In the event that a disk would start failing it was nearly impossible to identify which disk was failing except to take the disks and plug them into a different controller that could do proper passthrough. But any simulation of failing a disk by unplugging and such would behave normally. This would give the illusion that cards like Highpoint and Adaptec are just fine and will be safe for ZFS. But when things do go wrong for real you find out that you bargained with the devil and lost. Many zpools have been lost thanks to Highpoint and Adaptec.

 

[kr4m17]

Well, I have no problem testing the theories suggested here, but in in the interim I have a storage server that doesn't work. If the best long-term solution is to get rid of the Adaptec card, what do you suggest to replace an Adaptec 5445? It may also be helpful to note that the backplane on my server is a SuperMicro SAS836EL2 (doc attached)

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, I have no problem testing the theories suggested here, but in in the interim I have a storage server that doesn't work. If the best long-term solution is to get rid of the Adaptec card, what do you suggest to replace an Adaptec 5445? It may also be helpful to note that the backplane on my server is a SuperMicro SAS836EL2 (doc attached)

Your favorite LSI SAS 2008/2308-based SAS card, flashed to IT mode.
The cheapest is often the IBM M1015.

 

[kr4m17]

Your favorite LSI SAS 2008/2308-based SAS card, flashed to IT mode.
The cheapest is often the IBM M1015.

What would you recommend if I wanted to attach external arrays at some point in the future? That is part of why I like the Adaptec 5445.

Thank you.

 

[Ericloewe]

What would you recommend if I wanted to attach external arrays at some point in the future? That is part of why I like the Adaptec 5445.

Thank you.

Either use adapters or buy controllers that have external ports.

You'll find them by looking for stuff like LSI SAS 9207-8e instead of LSI SAS 9207-8i
There's also 4i4e for one internal and one external port.

 

[Mlovelace]

(pass0:aacp1:1:8:0): CAM status: CCB request completed with an error​

I believe this portion means that not all SMART information is being passed by your controller.