LSI 9211-8i P20 Firmware

[Maticks]

Hi All,

 

Hope someone can help me out here.

The LSI 9211-8i is a popular SAS Card for FreeNAS and Unraid.

However with LSI being bought out by Broadcom they have removed their firmware files from their site.

I am trying to move into IT Mode of my card on windows.

Does anyone happen to have the P20 Firmware files for me to do this.

 

[leadeater]

Damn I didn't know that the firmware is harder to find now, thank for the info.

 

Have you tried the firmware files on the 9210 download page?

https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9210-8i?pname=ACPL-38JT-000E#downloads

 

It has the P20 firmware files i.e:

Quote

9210-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows

Package_P20_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows

Version: 20.00.07.00

File Size: 1700 KB

Language: English

 

[Maticks]

Is the 9210 the same as the 9211-8i though, i don't want to brick my 9211..

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Maticks said:

Is the 9210 the same as the 9211-8i though, i don't want to brick my 9211..

Both I'm pretty sure both use the LSI SAS2008 controller chip so are basically the same card, really I think the only different is the 9210 has the ports on the back of the card and the 9211 has then on the end of the card.

 

Do check around and confirm the controller being used on both, I did a quick check and found references to 9211 being a SAS2008 controller.

https://www.servethehome.com/lsi-sas-2008-raid-controller-hba-information/

[iPolymer]

On 5/13/2017 at 3:41 AM, leadeater said:

 

https://www.servethehome.com/lsi-sas-2008-raid-controller-hba-information/

I had the same issue and used the same site for the 20.00.07.00 update. Works good now for my unRaid server!

[samiscool51]

On 2017-5-13 at 2:51 PM, Maticks said:

However with LSI being bought out by Broadcom they have removed their firmware files from their site.

yea this will become annoying, it's a good idea to keep the disk that comes with the drivers because if something like this happens, you have to have a local copy

sericery, i keep so many drivers for hardware (some that i don't own anymore) that it takes up about 500GB on my server, i checked my server's LSI folder for your device, i didn't find your firmware and drivers

sorry, check on places like the wayBack Machine, they have a application section for programs, drivers and firmware for older hardware that's organization has gone out of business, i got my windows 98 sound card driver from there! very handy!

[Guest]

This might help

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

 

[leasoncre]

hey @Maticks, how did this go? did the firmware/BIOS update go smoothly for ya?

i got one of these recently as well and want to know how your experience went.

[Maticks]

Yeah it was the same firmware. Getting into the efishell on my motherboard was a bit annoying. I used a work old Dell server as it had a supermicro motherboard. Once booted took all of 2 mins for applying the firmware.

If you did have the wrong one it does a validation it won't apply it. 

That's sort of what I read. 

[NelizMastr]

Got one of these cards as well in a Microserver G8 (non-UEFI). Mine is still on P19 firmware but I honestly can't be arsed hah  

[Maticks]

Really don’t think there is much in it. Since in IT mode it’s a hba.  really what could be improved haha...

[storagetekpro]

On 5/13/2017 at 12:51 AM, Maticks said:

Hi All,

 

Hope someone can help me out here.

The LSI 9211-8i is a popular SAS Card for FreeNAS and Unraid.

However with LSI being bought out by Broadcom they have removed their firmware files from their site.

I am trying to move into IT Mode of my card on windows.

Does anyone happen to have the P20 Firmware files for me to do this.

 

Here's the link to the LSI 9211-8i P20 Firmware if anyone still needs it:

 

9211_8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows

[mdrodge]

Is that still the current version?

[Maticks]

I haven’t updated mine. But if you have more than one card you need to delete the boot bios. The cards fight and you get read errors. I’ve got 3 Lsi 9211s they’ve been running p20 since 2018-19. 

[joscho42]

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

newest version for anyone looking ;) 

(20.00.07.00)

[phi0x]

On 3/18/2021 at 12:40 PM, Maticks said:

I haven’t updated mine. But if you have more than one card you need to delete the boot bios. The cards fight and you get read errors. I’ve got 3 Lsi 9211s they’ve been running p20 since 2018-19. 

Can you elaborate on this process? I have 2 cards installed now and sometimes my system locks up when I do scrubs of my drives for long periods of time. I also never upgraded mine and apparently the ones I bought don't come with the latest firmware so I wanted to try flashing them. How do you ensure the boot bios isn't enabled on one when flashing?

 

This guide explains how to flash: https://nguvu.org/freenas/Convert-LSI-HBA-card-to-IT-mode/

 

but doesn't talk about disabling the boot bios.

 

The command below includes updating the bios with the -b flag.

SAS2FLSH.EXE -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom 

 

If I do the above command for one card then for the second card don't include the -b flag will that ensure the bios isn't loaded?..

 

[phi0x]

2 hours ago, phi0x said:

Can you elaborate on this process? I have 2 cards installed now and sometimes my system locks up when I do scrubs of my drives for long periods of time. I also never upgraded mine and apparently the ones I bought don't come with the latest firmware so I wanted to try flashing them. How do you ensure the boot bios isn't enabled on one when flashing?

 

This guide explains how to flash: https://nguvu.org/freenas/Convert-LSI-HBA-card-to-IT-mode/

 

but doesn't talk about disabling the boot bios.

 

The command below includes updating the bios with the -b flag.

SAS2FLSH.EXE -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom 

 

If I do the above command for one card then for the second card don't include the -b flag will that ensure the bios isn't loaded?..

 

I was able to figure it out. For others, if you have more than 1 card you can either simply not flash a boot bios onto any card if you don't want or need the boot bios or choose to write to just one card the boot bios while the rest you don't need to. 

 

the following command will write just the firmware to all cards present (note I had to boot in efi mode to use sas2flash.efi):

sas2flash.efi -o -fwall 2118it.bin

 

[Maticks]

yeah i remove the boot bios from all my cards, but if you have it on one its fine. i just will never be booting off a drive on the card so pull it from all.

that way if i replace a card it doesn't matter it will work on boot as there is no boot bios to conflict with it.

Still running P20 without any issues.