H200 Flash to IT mode

[wolfslab]

I've tried numerous times to flash my H200 to IT mode so I can use it in Unraid, but no matter what I do, it doesn't work. The server is a R710. I've followed these guides linked below. I've tried flashing it inside of the server, in my gaming rig and a combination of the two. The flash seems successful, but on boot, I don't see where it says I can go into the utility for the card and it doesn't show like it did before when it was doing its systems check. Unraid can't detect the raid card also. Also, I'm not using the internal storage PCIe port because it won't boot with that raid card. It says "Invalid card in internal storage port."

 

Guide 1

Guide 2

[Electronics Wizardy]

Did you try it without the flash? My h200 works fine in the default mode and shows all the disk data and smart data to the os.

[KrYpToCiD]

I want to buy a H200 card and the seller offer to flash it for me. That being said I won't know how to do it for a while. Is there any way to know what mode is it running?

[Falconevo]

9 hours ago, wolfslab said:

I've tried numerous times to flash my H200 to IT mode so I can use it in Unraid, but no matter what I do, it doesn't work. The server is a R710. I've followed these guides linked below. I've tried flashing it inside of the server, in my gaming rig and a combination of the two. The flash seems successful, but on boot, I don't see where it says I can go into the utility for the card and it doesn't show like it did before when it was doing its systems check. Unraid can't detect the raid card also. Also, I'm not using the internal storage PCIe port because it won't boot with that raid card. It says "Invalid card in internal storage port."

 

Guide 1

Guide 2

I'm assuming you have the storage rom enabled in BIOS, if its disabled it won't give you the 'configure' or status of the controller.

Check your BIOS to make sure that legacy roms are enabled on boot.

[NelizMastr]

38 minutes ago, Falconevo said:

I'm assuming you have the storage rom enabled in BIOS, if its disabled it won't give you the 'configure' or status of the controller.

Check your BIOS to make sure that legacy roms are enabled on boot.

The R710 is too old to have UEFI/Legacy separation, it's Nehalem/Westmere. It's full legacy.

 

9 hours ago, wolfslab said:

The flash seems successful, but on boot, I don't see where it says I can go into the utility for the card and it doesn't show like it did before when it was doing its systems check.

Well, with a card in IT mode, you shouldn't be able to see the drives from the utility anyway. IT mode turns the controller into a dumb HBA that only serves as a communication medium between OS and disks attached to it. I have a LSI 9211-8i and it behaves in that way at least.

 

[Falconevo]

2 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

The R710 is too old to have UEFI/Legacy separation, it's Nehalem/Westmere. It's full legacy.

 

Well, with a card in IT mode, you shouldn't be able to see the drives from the utility anyway. IT mode turns the controller into a dumb HBA that only serves as a communication medium between OS and disks attached to it. I have a LSI 9211-8i and it behaves in that way at least.

 

I have a flashed H200 in a H710, you can enable/disable the storage rom within the R710's Bios config.  I can reboot mine when I get home from work later and show the bios config I use if you like?   It's been a long time since it was shutdown though, probably end up losing some 3TB Sata disks hah

[NelizMastr]

5 minutes ago, Falconevo said:

I have a flashed H200 in a H710, you can enable/disable the storage rom within the R710's Bios config.  I can reboot mine when I get home from work later and show the bios config I use if you like?   It's been a long time since it was shutdown though, probably end up losing some 3TB Sata disks hah

Mine is rocking decommissioned 2TB SAS disks atm. Works well enough and I have like 8 of them in storage (badum tss). Good to know you can disable the ROM. I'm not familiar with Dell's inner workings. I work for a HPE partner so I usually only see that.

[wolfslab]

4 hours ago, Falconevo said:

I have a flashed H200 in a H710, you can enable/disable the storage rom within the R710's Bios config.  I can reboot mine when I get home from work later and show the bios config I use if you like?   It's been a long time since it was shutdown though, probably end up losing some 3TB Sata disks hah

I can't find where the setting is to enable/disable the storage rom in the BIOS. Just to make sure, the BIOS of the server or the raid card? If its the raid card, it no longer gives me an option for the raid cards BIOS after I started flashing it.

[Falconevo]

43 minutes ago, wolfslab said:

I can't find where the setting is to enable/disable the storage rom in the BIOS. Just to make sure, the BIOS of the server or the raid card? If its the raid card, it no longer gives me an option for the raid cards BIOS after I started flashing it.

If you press F10 on boot, go in to life cycle controller > hardware config > view inventory

Click to view the inventory and wait a minute or so for it to populate, then in the drop down look for the addin RAID card section.  See if the card is displayed in this section.

If it isn't displayed, you have bricked the firmware on the card but it is recoverable.  You can start again with the flash, I hope you performed a backup of the current flash before starting using the tools provided? Also are you flashing to the 2118IT firmware going via the 6SAS firmware first?

I had to downgrade one of the PCIe H200's back to an older version before flashing with 6SAS then 2118IT.

 

 

[wolfslab]

5 hours ago, Falconevo said:

If you press F10 on boot, go in to life cycle controller > hardware config > view inventory

Click to view the inventory and wait a minute or so for it to populate, then in the drop down look for the addin RAID card section.  See if the card is displayed in this section.

If it isn't displayed, you have bricked the firmware on the card but it is recoverable.  You can start again with the flash, I hope you performed a backup of the current flash before starting using the tools provided? Also are you flashing to the 2118IT firmware going via the 6SAS firmware first?

I had to downgrade one of the PCIe H200's back to an older version before flashing with 6SAS then 2118IT.

 

 

It doesn't show up at all in the inventory. I don't have a backup for this card. I'm a newbie at server stuff, so from what I can tell from the guides, I flash the 6SAS firmware first, reboot, then flash the 2118IT firmware, and then assign the SAS address.

[Falconevo]

10 hours ago, wolfslab said:

It doesn't show up at all in the inventory. I don't have a backup for this card. I'm a newbie at server stuff, so from what I can tell from the guides, I flash the 6SAS firmware first, reboot, then flash the 2118IT firmware, and then assign the SAS address.

If its not showing in the inventory, you have bricked the firmware.  You may have to downgrade it to p7 first, that's a problem I came across previously as it wouldn't accept the 2118IT firmware without doing the following;

 

flash to 6GBPSAS.FW

program sas address

reboot

reflash to 2118p7.bin

program sas address

reboot

reflash to 2118it.bin

program sas address

reboot

 

I've attached the .bin file that I used to downgrade my H200 before the IT Flash, if you didn't back up the original firmware then you may struggle restoring it.  I have the original firmware on a Zalman somewhere but I left the Zalman in my colocation rack so I won't be able to get at it until next week at the earliest.

 

2118p7.bin

[wolfslab]

9 hours ago, Falconevo said:

If its not showing in the inventory, you have bricked the firmware.  You may have to downgrade it to p7 first, that's a problem I came across previously as it wouldn't accept the 2118IT firmware without doing the following;

 

flash to 6GBPSAS.FW

program sas address

reboot

reflash to 2118p7.bin

program sas address

reboot

reflash to 2118it.bin

program sas address

reboot

 

I've attached the .bin file that I used to downgrade my H200 before the IT Flash, if you didn't back up the original firmware then you may struggle restoring it.  I have the original firmware on a Zalman somewhere but I left the Zalman in my colocation rack so I won't be able to get at it until next week at the earliest.

 

2118p7.bin

I tried this and the same result. It won't show up at all in Unraid or the inventory. The raid cards light is a steady blinking light.

[Falconevo]

28 minutes ago, wolfslab said:

I tried this and the same result. It won't show up at all in Unraid or the inventory. The raid cards light is a steady blinking light.

You can try returning it to the H200 firmware and working from the top again, i've attached it here for ya;

 

If the card is responding to being flashed but the bios rom isnt loading, it sounds to me like you've missed something out of the steps.

 

 

H200A.FW

[wolfslab]

1 minute ago, Falconevo said:

You can try returning it to the H200 firmware and working from the top again, i've attached it here for ya;

 

If the card is responding to being flashed but the bios rom isnt loading, it sounds to me like you've missed something out of the steps.

 

 

H200A.FW

I would run megarec (to clean card), reboot, then flash the firmware you just sent and assign sas address and make sure its working, correct?

[wolfslab]

1 hour ago, Falconevo said:

You can try returning it to the H200 firmware and working from the top again, i've attached it here for ya;

 

If the card is responding to being flashed but the bios rom isnt loading, it sounds to me like you've missed something out of the steps.

 

 

H200A.FW

I tried to flash the H200A firmware with and without the mptsas2.rom and still didn't work. If there isnt anything else to do, would this card work in it? H330

[Falconevo]

1 hour ago, wolfslab said:

I tried to flash the H200A firmware with and without the mptsas2.rom and still didn't work. If there isnt anything else to do, would this card work in it? H330

The 330 will work and that one appears to already be flashed.

If u were in the UK i would of suggested sending me the card and I would of flashed it for ya n sent it back but you are across the globe

[dalekphalm]

On 8/6/2018 at 10:04 PM, wolfslab said:

I've tried numerous times to flash my H200 to IT mode so I can use it in Unraid, but no matter what I do, it doesn't work. The server is a R710. I've followed these guides linked below. I've tried flashing it inside of the server, in my gaming rig and a combination of the two. The flash seems successful, but on boot, I don't see where it says I can go into the utility for the card and it doesn't show like it did before when it was doing its systems check. Unraid can't detect the raid card also. Also, I'm not using the internal storage PCIe port because it won't boot with that raid card. It says "Invalid card in internal storage port."

 

Guide 1

Guide 2

You may need to remove the H200, and do the flashing on a non-Dell motherboard.

 

I have one, and I did try some flashing with it and I couldn't flash it at all in my T410. I ended up putting it back in IR mode mind you, but that's unrelated.

[wolfslab]

On 8/8/2018 at 6:05 PM, Falconevo said:

The 330 will work and that one appears to already be flashed.

If u were in the UK i would of suggested sending me the card and I would of flashed it for ya n sent it back but you are across the globe

The H310 arrived today and its getting stuck at Ethernet Boot Agent when booting. I did the trick where you cover pins B5 and B6 with electrical tape on the H310, and still is stuck at that place.

[wolfslab]

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

You may need to remove the H200, and do the flashing on a non-Dell motherboard.

 

I have one, and I did try some flashing with it and I couldn't flash it at all in my T410. I ended up putting it back in IR mode mind you, but that's unrelated.

I have done this already. Megarec wouldn't work at all on the server so I was forced to do this on my main desktop.

[wolfslab]

So it turns out that I didn't realize that SAS connectors will fit in either way, but only work a certain way. I put the H200 back in it, and 3 out of 5 drives are being detected by Unraid. I'm gonna figure out how to get the last 2, but it seems to work now. 

[kidego]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I've recently swapped an H200 for my H700.  I read that the 200 will allow the drives to be read and work independently of raid.  

So as I'm preparing to flash this card (thank you for such detailed instructions)  I want to ask... How will I know if the card is or isn't already flashed?  Currently it says it's a Dell H200 but the firmware and such on screen all say Logitech. 

[Jarsky]

It should say what Firmware/ROM its running during POST. Are you sure you're looking at the right info, as Logitech does absolutely nothing with disk controllers....maybe you're looking at firmware to do with an accessory plugged in? 

 

You might be able to query the card with megacli as well or possibly MegaRAID Manager

megarec or sas2flash may be able to give you the info as well if you query for adapters. 

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, kidego said:

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I've recently swapped an H200 for my H700.  I read that the 200 will allow the drives to be read and work independently of raid.  

So as I'm preparing to flash this card (thank you for such detailed instructions)  I want to ask... How will I know if the card is or isn't already flashed?  Currently it says it's a Dell H200 but the firmware and such on screen all say Logitech. 

Can you access the H200's BIOS Configuration utility (often called OROM - or Options ROM)? Usually Ctrl + R, but it'll flash on the screen during the BIOS post process.

 

This particular guide has a section on IT vs IR firmware (IT is Initiator Target - that's "HBA" mode. IR is Initiator Receiver - that's "RAID" mode). However, not every card will make it obvious:

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/detailed-newcomers-guide-to-crossflashing-lsi-9211-9300-9311-hba-and-variants.54/

 

Read Section 4. Usually the best thing is to boot into the OROM and see if it'll let you configure RAID options. On my H200, it's in IR mode, and does let me configure RAID options. My 9207-8e, on the other hand, won't let me configure any RAID options.