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To begin, I have 4 questions regarding networking and mainly unRaid. First of all, if I run a Haswell i3 on an ITX motherboard, I only have one available 1gbe port on the motherboard and the single available PCI-E slot is being used for the LSI 9200-8e: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118116 (yes, I know that is a external SAS HBA card but even with all the accessories I will need to convert the SFF-8088 mini-SAS External Connectors to SFF-8087 SAS connectors, the total price is still $100+ USD cheaper than buying the newer 9300-8i. Complete HBA and accessories pricing: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Rmpr99 is $161.13 vs the price of the 9300-8i: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118217 is $275.) Question #1: If I have a only 1gbe port on the motherboard and I want to increase my write speed onto the SSD cache when multiple pc's are off loading data, I want to implement link aggregation however I don't have enough physical PCI-E slots. Therefore, can I use a basic USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (here's one from StarTech:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833114074&ignorebbr=1&cm_re=usb_3.0_to_ethernet_adapter-_-33-114-074-_-Product) and team the two ethernet ports together? I always thought yes however recently I thought of the unRaid OS, and if it will recognize the two NIC's as separate devices that can be linked. Also, for those who just found out that they can setup link aggregation in unRaid, here are the steps to it: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=30814.0 Question #2: This is a spin off of the last question since on the unRaid forums, it said that if you are only running 1gbe, than an SSD cache isn't worth it. However, is it worth to have an SSD cache if I can run 2gbe? (that is relying on the answer to the last question being a yes) Question #3: Should I go with 4TB drives or 6TB drives (HGST Deskstar NAS drives either way)? Since the NAS need to be small form factor (in the node 304) and I have an H series board with an i3, a stock CPU cooler with one stick of 8GB's of ram, I don't want to step away from this form facor. Furthermore, I do not have a closet that I can designate for the NAS, I only have space in the media console under the family TV. Linus suggested a great idea in his Reliable Data Storage on the Cheap! video and that is to get a used server chassis from ebay however I just dont have the required space to do so. Question #4: Currently I have my second router (which is only playing the role of an access point) plugged into one of the LAN ports on my main router, however I will run out of ethernet ports on my main router if I connect the NAS to it, therefore I have to get a 8 port 10/100/1000 switch. This brings me to my question, should I connect the modem to the switch and the main router to the switch or should I connect the modem straight to the main router and then connect the main router to the switch? I will thank everyone in advance for the help. Thank you.
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My current Server is running on some old hardware - a dual core Xeon running on the LGA775 platform, with Windows Home Server 2011 running on top. It's a pretty old platform, and I have some (slightly) newer hardware I'd like to use. However, I don't want to rebuild my array. I have an LSI 8888ELP RAID Card, hooked directly into a Rackable SE3016 SAS expander - all the HDD's in question are in the SAS expander. (6 of them, of various capacities right now) I'd like to know if I can simply take out the RAID Card, drop it into a new computer (Installing drivers, of course), hook up the SAS Expander, and will the OS be able to just see all my drives? Is there any special requirement for migrating a RAID Card and existing config to a new computer?
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Hello all, I have a bit of an issue. I have a MegaRAID 9361-8i in a new build. But I made some errors about air flow. Mainly I didn't realize this card would get as hot as it does. Basically, after about 20-minutes it is up to 130°F+... So I'm looking at cooling options... I was thinking something that fits in a PCI slot and can hold a couple fans, but I can't seem to find anything that looks like it's worth the money. I I have everything in a fractal design r5 case with 5 hard drives. So I have some room to fit some stuff but I'm not sure what I can do to cool this thing down, for the long run. Any suggestions or ideas would be amazing. At this point I can't really run the system. Thank you!
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In this video: at 2:38 Linus says that the Lsi megaraid sas 9361-8i (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118231&cm_re=9361-8i-_-16-118-231-_-Product) supports "Online capacity expansion" a feature which is esential for me since I want to add drives to the setup as time progreses. However, I do not want to go with that expensive raid card and instead I want to use the LSI megaraid sas 9260-8i (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118105). Does that raid card support "online capacity expansion"? I will be running raid 6
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Which drive is best for a nas which will initially have 8 drives and then will be expaned to 12 drives? The WD Red is said to have a max of 8 drives at one however in this video : Linus has 8 drives in raid 5 and says that in the future it will be expanded. Therefore, is it okay to have more than 8 at once?? The WD Red Pro are said to have a limit of 16 which is great, however the added cost is tremendous. Do the (hitachi) HGST deskstar NAS drives have a limit to the number drives that can be in one server? If yes what is that limit? 8? 12? 16? Thanks, Dennis.
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Im choosing an ssd for a pc and I came across 1 thats has a custom LSI controller. Im new at this and I have no idea what that is, can some1 help me? I you also know any good 120gb ssds that would be great. Right now Im between the Kingston HyperX Fury 120GB ($60) and the Kingston Digital 120GB SSDNow V300 SATA ($57). Apparently the 2nd one has an lsi custom controller and the other doesnt.
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Hi guys, I have an LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i 8-port RAID card with 4x3TB Barracuda's attached, I'm looking for a new motherboard throw it in to relieve pressure on my current rig. I found this article online specifying approved motherboards, but none of them are available any longer. http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/RAID%20Controllers/RAID%20Controllers%20Common%20Files/MegaRAID_Entry_Interop_List_SAS2.pdf The closest thing I could find to them was a Sabertooth 990FX from Asus: http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-sabertooth-990fx-r2-0-atx-de-75613.htm I've used a Sabertooth X58 (my cousin bought one, and I installed it for him), very nice board so i'm not concerned at all with buying another TuF series board. Does anyone have any other motherboards that they know work decently with this card? I have a Gigabyte Z87X-UD5H that REFUSES to recognize the RAID array on the card, or i'd throw it in there in a pinch. Thanks, Calvin
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http://techreport.com/news/26524/seagate-buys-sandforce-from-lsi-in-450-million-deal Damn. Now we can all have pure seagate storage???? This is powerful. If SF3700 is truly awesome, seagate could really take a strong lead in the SSD market, and perhaps fight against companies like Toshiba and Samsung. I'm interested to see what seagate can contribute to the SSD space, especially considering that their current drives are pretty good.
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I recently had a break in at my small business, and think it's important for me to keep a better history of surveillance recordings. I currently have 16 cameras running 24/7 previously just used the cameras to watch in real time or hold a few days of recordings, so here's my plan: Replace 1tb hdd in dvr with 3tb wd purple (maxed out) My Q See DVR allows me to go the ip address of the dvr and download all video from a certain date range to a pc in normal video format, but I currently don't have a suitable computer. I have built a few computers for my own use in the past but nothing like this, here are my thoughts so far: Eight 4tb WD Red drives, in RAID 6 running off of an intel or lsi raid controller an extra wd red on hand if a drive fails SSD boot drive cooler master storm trooper case because I've built in it before and it has enough bays and won't move the hot air from the hard drives into the main part of the case (the case brings in air on one side, over the hdd's and exhausts out the other side of the case, near the front) Asus Sabertooth z87 mobo intel i5-4670 some type of solid PSU like a corsair AX series molex to sata cables if needed for drives 8gb RAM Then every week or so, I would download the security cam data from the DVR for longer term safekeeping on a computer that will give me easy access should I ever need to pull a recording up. The computer may not need a sabertooth board or an i5, but I'd like to have a nicer work computer as well for my office so this could kill two birds with one stone. I also considered a Drobo, but I'm concerned about a malfunction in the system itself. If something in a custom computer fails I can get parts and repair it fairly quickly, but if the drobo system failed, I would likely be down for a longer period of time. What do you think?
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I finally managed to put together my home server rig. This will be used for Plex streaming (by one or two users at a time, no transcoding), audio/video file storage, and backups of my other PC's (via Acronis and FreeFileSync). MB: GA-F2A88XN-WIFI FM2+ CPU: AMD A4-5300 HSF: Noctua NH-L9a RAM: 1 x Corsair Vengeance Pro 4GB DDR-1600 (heatsink blocks one of the DIMM slots) PSU: Seasonic G Series 450W RAID: LSI MegaRaid 9260-4i w/ LSIiBBU08 BBU (will be getting the battery shortly) HDD: 4 x WD RED 2TB CASE: Fractal Node 304 OS: WHS 2011 I'm a little unsure of some of the settings as this is my first real hardware raid setup. Any issues with these? 1) Strip Size: I've had people tell me anywhere between 32KB to 512KB for a RAID5 setup. 256KB was the default so I stuck with that. 2) Disk Cache Policy: This enables/disables the on-drive cache. I was advised to leave this disabled since the controller has a 512MB cache. 3) IO Policy: Direct IO vs Cached IO (not sure what this affects)
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" it is entirely possible to store 360GB of information on a 120GB SSD, depending on the type of data stored. This can only be done in LSI SSDs as they use compression in their storage and, as much as it might be intended for new generation controllers, this demo was being done on the SF-2000. A bit disappointing is that, although it can be used on the SF-2000 and todays LSI SandForce SSDs, it is not intended for the consumer and is meant specifically for hyperscale data centers and cloud servers." Pretty interesting,shame we won't get to see it as a consumer product :/ Source:http://thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz/lsi-durawrite-virtual-capacity-increses-ssd-capacity-by-up-to-3x-flash-memory-summit-2013-update/
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LSI MegaRAID 9260-4i Raid Card Compatible with AMD Boards?
N7_Zer0 posted a topic in Storage Devices
Looking to get this RAID card for a file server I'm building but not sure if I'm able to access the card's WebBIOS (option rom) with the newer AMD A88X boards. Anybody have experience with this combo? I currently have a Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI. I emailed LSi but all they could say was they don't support consumer boards and Gigabyte didn't have a clue about what I was talking about. They said if the card fits in the PCIe slot, it'll work <facepalm>. I have an Asus board with an option in the BIOS to enable "Interrupt 19 capture" which is required to get into the RAID card's BIOS. The Gigabyte board has no such option so I'm not sure if it's already supported. I really don't want to buy the RAID card and then find out it doesn't work. Thanks. -
Flashing an LSI 9211-8i to IT Mode (might also be useful for flashing other LSI RAID cards) (newbie edition) "It can't be that difficult.", I thought to myself before starting this adventure. "Tons of people have done it, there are quite a few tutorials on it, this should be feasible." Yeah, right... Seriously though, it's not actually that tricky, it's just that the info I needed to get it done required quite a bit searching and trial-and-error. Note: I put this in the storage subforum instead of the tutorials because it's fairly specific and the people who might find this useful are more likely to be lurking around here I'd estimate. Disclaimer Flashing your cards can break them if things go wrong. This post is merely a documentation on my way to success, and I provide this info in the hopes it might be useful to somebody. However, I take no responsibility for anyone else's misfortunes. Proceed at your own peril. Anyway... FreeNAS Users @wpirobotbuilder has discovered that FreeNAS already seems to have the sas2flash utility built in, check this post for more info. Windows Users See this post from @Danny91 for a small tip about drive spin up and down. The Objective I plan on using this card in a server running ZFS as its main data file system. Since this isn't a ZFS tutorial I won't go into the details, but basically ZFS prefers direct access to your disks without a controller doing any "smart" things in between (like, for example, running a RAID setup). Often, RAID cards will be delivered running in IR mode (Integrated RAID firmware), and we would like to change that to IT mode (Initiator target mode), so that the controller just acts as a host bus adapter without trying to do anything smart. This can also be desirable if you're not running ZFS, for example if you'd like to use software RAID. In order to change from IR to IT mode, we need to flash a different firmware onto the card. What I Used - motherboard: Asus P8Z68 (yes, the M/B matters) - a 4 GB USB flash drive - the file 9211-8i_Package_P17_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows from LSI's product site's "SOFTWARE DOWNLOADS" section on the 9211-8i. - the file Installer_P17_for_UEFI from LSI's product site's "SOFTWARE DOWNLOADS" section on the 9211-8i - a precompiled UEFI shell (see below for details) Sources I primarily followed the instructions from Bryan Vyhmeister's excellent blog post on this topic, but I needed to do quite a bit of additional research on getting the UEFI shell to work, which is why I'm creating this tutorial (not that I fault him for that, his tutorial is not supposed to be an UEFI shell primer, after all. If it hadn't been for his post it would have probably taken me many more hours than it did). There's quite a bit more info I plowed through on my way to the objective, but none of it was really pertinent to getting the job done. Also, for some of the UEFI shell files, I used the Arch Linux Wiki. Shall We Proceed? Alright then, let's get started. Getting the Firmware and BIOS Files for the HBA Note: Obviously, the version numbers might change in the future. - Create a FAT partition on the USB drive. - 9211-8i_Package_P17_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows: Grab the file from LSI's site (doesn't matter if you're running Linux, *BSD or Win) and unpack it. You need the file 2118it.bin, located in the directory Firmware/HBA_9211_8i_IT in the archive. Of course you can also choose to simply update the IR firmware if you wish, then you'll need that file, located in Firmware/HBA_9211_8i_IR. Either way, copy the firmware file onto your USB drive. - You also need to update the card's BIOS for this (at least AFAIK), so also grab the file mptsas2.rom, located in the directory sasbios_rel inside the archive. Copy that file onto your USB drive as well. - Note: You can, but don't need to, create separate directories on your USB drive. In the end, we will only have four files on it, so it doesn't really matter. - Grab the Installer_P17_for_UEFI file from LSI's website and unpack it. - Copy the file sas2flash.efi, from in the directory sas2flash_efi_ebc_rel in the archive, onto your USB drive, into the same directory as the firmware and the BIOS file (yes, I'm aware you can put all of the three files at arbitrary locations, but why make things more complicated...). - That's phase 1 completed, now all that's left is getting this to run on your PC. That was actually the trickier part for me... Getting the UEFI Shell The first thing that went through my mind when I got to that part of the tutorial I linked above was pretty much just "WTF?". I quite frankly had simply never heard of an UEFI shell, let alone used one, and searching the web I found precious little information about the subject (and what I did find was mostly rather technical and would have required lots of thorough reading to understand it, and even then it was doubtful if it was actually going to be of any use to me). For those of you who are also a bit puzzled by this (then again, maybe I am the only one), basically the EFI shell is a command line interface that let's you do basic system tasks on your machine (yes, I am aware that that is a very broad generalization, but it will suffice for the purposes of this tutorial, otherwise you are welcome to start reading docs on the subject). Unfortunately, depending on your M/B (and that's why the M/B is relevant in this), you will require a different shell, and will need to follow different steps to access it. I have gotten the impression that some boards even come with an integrated one, but I'm not 100% certain on that. If you have such a board, you can skip the next part, since you don't need to download one. The different versions of the shell you're most likely to need are these: - For the most current version (the 2.0 branch), go here and select the one which matches your architecture. - If those do not work for you (and in my case they did not), it might be that your M/B requires an older version, either the X64 or IA32 version. - The links for the v1 versions I got from the Arch Linux wiki page here, as mentioned above. - Copy the EFI shell onto your USB drive as well, I called it shellx64.efi. I am not absolutely certain, but the name might matter to some extent to your M/B, I have also come across simpler names like shell.efi, but I was so glad when I finally got things working I didn't experiment further to check which names work and which do not. UPDATE: Did another flash, indeed Shell.efi also worked. Flashing the HBA Mount the LSI card in your machine, plug in the USB drive with all four files on it (the LSI BIOS, the firmware, the sas2flash utility and the efi shell), and drop into the BIOS of your machine. Note: I'm not an expert on this subject, but I have seen it recommended to have only one 9211-8i in your system during this process. Allegedly it's possible to specifically target a card to flash, but I couldn't try that out, so I have no info on that process. Getting Into the UEFI Shell This too wil probably depend on your M/B. On mine, there was an option in the Exit BIOS menu of the BIOS which said Launch EFI Shell from filesystem device. Basically, that option will search any devices you have connected for anything that might be an EFI shell and will try to run it. If you have the wrong shell or your machine can't find it, you will fail here (took me a few tries to get to the next step...). Mounting the USB Drive Once you're in the shell, you need to mount the USB drive with the files on it so that you can access them (obviously). On my machine, the first thing the shell did was print a nice list of all connected storage devices, with my USB drive labeled ft0 and my HDDs and SSDs labeled blk... You might need to do a bit of trial and error here to find the right drive, but it shouldn't be an insurmountable obstacle. In my case, mounting the USB drive was done with: Then I needed to change directories into the drive: mount ft0: (yes, no 'cd ' or anything like that). ft0: Inside a directory, you can list the contents with and change directories with ls And this is what it looked like for me after that: cd directory_name (click image for full res) Actually Flashing the Card This was actually fairly straightforward. Make sure you're in the directory with the BIOS, firmware and sas2flash.efi, and run the following command to reset the card and prepare it for the new BIOS and firmware. CAREFUL: DO NOT TURN OFF OR REBOOT YOUR MACHINE AT THIS POINT. ALLEGEDLY YOU WILL HAVE A BRICKED CARD ON YOUR HANDS!!! This is what it looked like during the erasing process for me. The actual erasing takes a while, to be specific this step: (click image for full res) sas2flash.efi -o -e 6 After a successful erase, this is what you should get: (click image for full res) Then flash it with the new files: Which should look like this: (click image for full res) You can check if the new flash was successful with: sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom Which gave me this output: (click image for full res) sas2flash.efi -listall Alternatively, you can get more detailed info with the -list command. The 'Firmware Product ID" field will indicate if the controller is now running in IT mode: Output for that command: sas2flash.efi -list (click image for full res) NOTE: You can also check if the sas2flash utility detects your card(s) properly with the listall command before you start the whole process. If the card doesn't show up here, you won't be able to start flashing in the first place. You can then leave the UEFI shell with exit and should be back in your M/B's BIOS. To make sure your card is now in IT mode, reboot your machine and it should get displayed when the card's BIOS is run. As you can see, it is not actually all that complex, but there are a hilarious many things that can refuse to play ball in this, and sorting out those from the ones that work took quite a bit of effort. If you search around the web for flashing this card you will find many alternative procedures, and depending on your setup (hardware, the version of sas2flash you're using, which firmware type and version you're wanting to flash onto the card etc.) some of them might actually work for you. For me, however, this was the only one that lead to success. Thanks to Bryan's post I was able to save lots of time in finding out which files and tools I needed, but then I was stuck quite a while on that whole UEFI shell thing. Once I had that up and running it was a pretty painless process though. If you find any errors please point them out. I wrote down what I did quite carefully during the process (primarily to make sure I could reproduce it with a second card should I ever buy one), but I'm not infallible, so there might be undesired entropy lurking somewhere. Thanks for reading! So long -aw
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I am looking at RAID cards, but need to keep them adequately cooled. On a bunch of product briefs (LSI 9211-8i, Adaptec 6805e, and others), the manufacturer specifies 200 LFM of airflow. If I had a fan blowing on it, either directly or from the side, how might I choose a fan based on the fan's CFM?
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Hello all. It's been a stressful day for me - I recently bought a LSI 9211 with a view to cross flashing it to a 9240 as I'd read many similar reports (including some here, which is why I'm posting) of people doing the other way with little trouble. - Alas, it wasn't to be, which is quite annoying a it was the same price as the 9240, but had its connectors in a more convenient orientation for my case, so I got it solely for that reason! Long story short, the flash failed as the flash chip I have is only 4MB, and it seems the 9240 requires 8MB. So I've tried to get the card back to how it was, but I can't for the life of me get it to flash successfully. I backed up my existing firmware, bios, and sbr. My procedure has been generally: megarec -cleanflash 0 megarec -writesbr 0 backupsbr.bin <reboot> sas2flash -f backupfw.bin (then -b backupbios.rom, but I gave up trying to get the bios back until I had the firmware working) ...it initially succeeds, but then fails at the end with the error about Mfg Page 2 mismatching. If I try flashing the bios, then it also initially succeeds with the flash, but then fails t the end when updating the "version page 3", or similar (as I say, I stopped bothering with it as the fw is more important). Any ideas on how I can flash this back to normal? The card came with firmware P14 IR on it, if that helps any. I've tried using sas2flash's new "-sbr" option, which sounds like it's designed to fix my firmware problem, but it just doesn't seem to work - just fails the same way.
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hi there just been looking to get a raid card ( cheap one ) but i just dont know if this card will work with my pc so will the LSI Mega 9240-8i SAS SATA work with a 6700k, Asus Z170-DELUXE, ? Thanks