Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

I read through the list and it seems to be the more common suggestion.

It is old now (I see it mentioned a few years ago), and downloading the tools to
flash it to IT mode recently became difficult (is there an official site?).
Yet it is relatively cheap.

So, is there another candidate for 8 way HBA for use with linux software raid?

TIA

-- 
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal@eyal.emu.id.au)

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Carsten Aulbert]

Hi

On 09/28/17 10:34, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
> It is old now (I see it mentioned a few years ago), and downloading the
> tools to
> flash it to IT mode recently became difficult (is there an official site?).
> Yet it is relatively cheap.
> 
> So, is there another candidate for 8 way HBA for use with linux software
> raid?

We operate a couple of SAS3008 based cards from Broadcom formerly known
as Avago formerly known as LSI ;)

E.g. the 9300-8i card which we flashed ourselves from IR to IT mode work
quite nicely without any complain at the moment.

Cheers

Carsten

-- 
Dr. Carsten Aulbert, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics,
Callinstraße 38, 30167 Hannover, Germany
Phone: +49 511 762 17185

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Johannes Truschnigg]

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On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 10:40:43AM +0200, Carsten Aulbert wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On 09/28/17 10:34, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
> > [...]
> > So, is there another candidate for 8 way HBA for use with linux software
> > raid?
> 
> We operate a couple of SAS3008 based cards from Broadcom formerly known
> as Avago formerly known as LSI ;)
> 
> E.g. the 9300-8i card which we flashed ourselves from IR to IT mode work
> quite nicely without any complain at the moment.

Same here - just make sure to flash a recent-ish firmware image. The 3008 was
unusable garbage before the (iirc) "P8" release for us.

-- 
with best regards:
- Johannes Truschnigg ( johannes@truschnigg.info )

www:   https://johannes.truschnigg.info/
phone: +43 650 2 133337
xmpp:  johannes@truschnigg.info

Please do not bother me with HTML-email or attachments. Thank you.

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Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Ram Ramesh]

On 09/28/2017 03:52 AM, Johannes Truschnigg wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 10:40:43AM +0200, Carsten Aulbert wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> On 09/28/17 10:34, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> So, is there another candidate for 8 way HBA for use with linux software
>>> raid?
>> We operate a couple of SAS3008 based cards from Broadcom formerly known
>> as Avago formerly known as LSI ;)
>>
>> E.g. the 9300-8i card which we flashed ourselves from IR to IT mode work
>> quite nicely without any complain at the moment.
> Same here - just make sure to flash a recent-ish firmware image. The 3008 was
> unusable garbage before the (iirc) "P8" release for us.
>
I have 9211 (for about 9 months). Had to flash IT firmware. It is a bit 
slow in enumerrating attached disks and sometimes kernel misses a disk 
or two at boot up that shows up afterwards.  This kind of messes up md. 
I suspect this is more of the problem with ubuntu 14.04 I have, rather 
than md or 9211 problem. However, simple re-add fixes it. Since upgrade 
to newer version is a problem for me, I am just dealing with it. So, you 
may not even have this problem.

Ramesh

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

On 28/09/17 18:34, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
> I read through the list and it seems to be the more common suggestion.
> 
> It is old now (I see it mentioned a few years ago), and downloading the tools to
> flash it to IT mode recently became difficult (is there an official site?).
> Yet it is relatively cheap.
> 
> So, is there another candidate for 8 way HBA for use with linux software raid?
> 
> TIA

I got replies that suggest LSI (or equiv) 9211-8i or 9300-8i as good cards.

The price difference is significant, so I wonder what I get for the extra
money, especially as I plan to use it as a plain HBA (so no hwr raid, is
this what the IT fw is?).

For example, is the 9211 (older model?) likely to not work with a new
mobo a year from now (I plan to upgrade)?
Broadcom removed the 9211 from their site, is the 9207-8i the current
replacement model?

I will not use SSDs with the card, so handling 8 HDDs should not be a
stretch for either one?

TIA

-- 
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal@eyal.emu.id.au)

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Mon, 2 Oct 2017, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:

> I will not use SSDs with the card, so handling 8 HDDs should not be a 
> stretch for either one?

I know people who use 9211-8i with 36 drives via SAS expanders. With HDDs, 
this isn't typically a problem, it's mostly a bandwidth problem than IOPS 
problem.

If I were to deploy an 8 drive machine, 9211-8i or cards with similar LSI 
2008 chips, would be my first choice (since it's cheap and is widely 
used).

There has been some firmware trouble with it. I believe P20 had trouble. 
P19 seems to work fine.

https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=50032

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

On 03/10/17 00:41, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Oct 2017, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
> 
>> I will not use SSDs with the card, so handling 8 HDDs should not be a stretch for either one?
> 
> I know people who use 9211-8i with 36 drives via SAS expanders. With HDDs, this isn't typically a problem, it's mostly a bandwidth problem than IOPS problem.
> 
> If I were to deploy an 8 drive machine, 9211-8i or cards with similar LSI 2008 chips, would be my first choice (since it's cheap and is widely used).
> 
> There has been some firmware trouble with it. I believe P20 had trouble. P19 seems to work fine.
> 
> https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=50032

Thanks Mikael,

Read it and did more searching. The latest I found is this (a year old):
   https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/tutorial-updating-ibm-m1015-lsi-9211-8i-firmware-on-uefi-systems.11462/
and it closes by saying:
   P20 Myth
     There are many revisions of the P20 firmware. The first few had lots of bugs
     so people suggest avoiding it. However, someone pointed out that all versions
     that are 20.00.04 and after are fine. I using the current latest version 20.00.07
     and have had no problems. Did a full scrub, bonnie benchmark, copied large files
     and played them back with no errors.

I was looking for a URL to download the necessary files but the official sites removed
them. The one linked from the above blog contains the files, is it reliable?
   https://www.mediafire.com/download/6mtie10d9ud6675/LSI-9211-8i.zip
It contains:
   $ strings -a 2118it.bin | head -n 1
   @(#)MPTFW-20.00.07.00-IT
   $ md5sum 2118it.bin
   8d8cd74b8080bbe100aedb8dff092301  2118it.bin

Is there a known good/safe site for these files?

Regards

-- 
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal@eyal.emu.id.au)

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Tue, 3 Oct 2017, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:

> Is there a known good/safe site for these files?

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6b0oho/lsi_92118i_firmware_missing_from_broadcom_site/

lead me to this:

https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12350530

which gave me a file called:

9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip

it contains a file called 20.00.07.00 release notes, so that seems 
promising?

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Roman Mamedov]

On Mon, 2 Oct 2017 19:29:34 +1100
Eyal Lebedinsky <eyal@eyal.emu.id.au> wrote:

> I will not use SSDs with the card, so handling 8 HDDs should not be a
> stretch for either one?

Speaking of SSDs, handling *those* indeed will be a stretch, but for other
reasons. These cards are finicky about enabling TRIM support:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/416886/does-the-mpt2sas-driver-support-trim

I have an LSI 9212-4i and it also does not pass-through TRIM with a few SSDs
that I tried.

-- 
With respect,
Roman

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

On 03/10/17 19:42, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Oct 2017, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
> 
>> Is there a known good/safe site for these files?
> 
> https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6b0oho/lsi_92118i_firmware_missing_from_broadcom_site/
> 
> lead me to this:
> 
> https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12350530
> 
> which gave me a file called:
> 
> 9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip
> 
> it contains a file called 20.00.07.00 release notes, so that seems promising?

Not meaning to be rude, but are you sure? Recently?
The way to wrote is as if you have done this just now. I am asking because this is the
first place I looked and these files (9211 and 9210) seem to be always missing.

I even turned off *all* security add-ons (something I really hate doing) to no avail.

But I am ready to be proven wrong.

cheers

-- 
Eyal at Home (eyal@eyal.emu.id.au)

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Tue, 3 Oct 2017, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:

> On 03/10/17 19:42, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
>> On Tue, 3 Oct 2017, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
>> 
>>> Is there a known good/safe site for these files?
>> 
>> https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6b0oho/lsi_92118i_firmware_missing_from_broadcom_site/
>> 
>> lead me to this:
>> 
>> https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12350530
>> 
>> which gave me a file called:
>> 
>> 9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip
>> 
>> it contains a file called 20.00.07.00 release notes, so that seems 
>> promising?
>
> Not meaning to be rude, but are you sure? Recently?
> The way to wrote is as if you have done this just now. I am asking because 
> this is the
> first place I looked and these files (9211 and 9210) seem to be always 
> missing.
>
> I even turned off *all* security add-ons (something I really hate doing) to 
> no avail.
>
> But I am ready to be proven wrong.

I did it as I wrote that email.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Re: Is the LSI SAS9211-8i still the go to HBA?

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

On 03/10/17 20:15, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Oct 2017, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
> 
>> On 03/10/17 19:42, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
>>> On Tue, 3 Oct 2017, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is there a known good/safe site for these files?
>>>
>>> https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6b0oho/lsi_92118i_firmware_missing_from_broadcom_site/
>>>
>>> lead me to this:
>>>
>>> https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12350530
>>>
>>> which gave me a file called:
>>>
>>> 9211-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip
>>>
>>> it contains a file called 20.00.07.00 release notes, so that seems promising?
>>
>> Not meaning to be rude, but are you sure? Recently?
>> The way to wrote is as if you have done this just now. I am asking because this is the
>> first place I looked and these files (9211 and 9210) seem to be always missing.
>>
>> I even turned off *all* security add-ons (something I really hate doing) to no avail.
>>
>> But I am ready to be proven wrong.
> 
> I did it as I wrote that email.

Mikael, thank you for confirming.

I was unable to fetch the file, always getting the "Thank you for downloading"
panel but no download. I am on f26 using ff "56.0 (64-bit)".

Sadly, I started a windows machine using ie11 and it downloaded just fine.
ff on windows did not download, same as on linux. But this is OT...

Thanks again

-- 
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal@eyal.emu.id.au)