Server Products
Data Center Products including boards, integrated systems, Intel® Xeon® Processors, RAID Storage, and Intel® Xeon® Processors
4761 Discussions

lsi 2008 RS2WC080

idata
Employee
1,877 Views

hi,

I am looking to use this card as a replacement to a supermicro usas-l8i for use with Solaris and ZFS.

I am however struggling to find out of the controller on this card will allow direct access to the disks (without raid).

If so does it require a reflash (say it IT mode rather than IR).

Cheers

Paul

0 Kudos
5 Replies
idata
Employee
544 Views

Paul,

Check the RS2WC080 http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/CS-031251.htm Technical Product Specification. Search for "pass through".

Regards,

John

0 Kudos
ABrow15
Beginner
544 Views

(Yes, I know this is a late followup)

When running in Passthrough (JBOD) mode the card is unstable and tends to lockup after a few days/weeks (either 1 port or the entire card). This is a known problem with LSI SAS2008 controllers when they are in IR (RAID) mode.

It is possible to flash the device using LSI SAS9240-8i IT firmware but that means jumping through quite a few hoops.

It'd be nice if there was a genuine intel IT flash for the card. Is there any chance you can provide one?

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
544 Views

Alan,

Where do you see that this is a known problem with LSI SAS2008 controllers when in IR (RAID) mode?

If the card is unstable and tends to lockup after a few days/weeks, I do suggest updating the firmware and driver to see if that resolves the issue.

I do not recommend updating with LSI firmware.

Regards,

John

0 Kudos
ABrow15
Beginner
544 Views

This has been an item of discussion on various ZFS and NAS lists for a couple of years. Search for "SAS2008 IT firmware" and you'll get the idea.

I'm already running the latest firmware version (flashed it from this site about 2 weeks ago) and I'm still having trouble.

Power supplies are clean and memory is ECC. I've eliminated everything except the card and the next step is a LSI flash or changing it out.

0 Kudos
ABrow15
Beginner
544 Views

As far as drivers go: I'm using Linux 3.11.0, which is pretty much the latest driver.

Lockups have been reported on both Linux and BSD platforms - and given that the only fix seems to be power cycling (not just unload/reloading the driver), I doubt it's driver related in any case.

0 Kudos
Reply