DS4246 with LSI 3008e(Lenovo N2225) on Dell RX730xd Windows Server 2016

WheresMyMedia · December 2, 2020

I have a DS4246 with 8TB SATA drives connected to a LSI 3008e(Lenovo N2225) HBA flashed to P16 IT Mode firmware. I have this connected to a Dell RX730xd running Windows Server 2016. The HBA driver shows up as Avago Adapter, SAS3 3008 Fury - Storport . I can see all my drives in the HBA's bios likewise with any of the Storage Management Utilities such as MegaRaid and LSI Storage Authority the DS4246 and Drives all show up. I however neither see the drives under the device manager or disk management in the Windows 2016 OS. To rule out it being an issue with the 8TB drives I also installed a 2TB drive that I had lying around. I also checked that my boot support wasn't "BIOS ONLY". It's set to "BIOS & OS" which should be fine. The only things I can think of trying at this point is to set the Boot support option to "OS Only", try the same setup with UnRAID to see if I have the same issue to rule out the OS, and covering up pins A5 & A6 in case of an SMBIOS issue as is the case with some Dell HBA's that have been flashed to IT mode.

Is there anything else I can check? Is it possible that there is anything on the DS4246 that I might need set. As I understand that it's more or less just a JBOD with SAS expander when used like this. I've spent days debugging this so far. I also came across this post which appears to narrow down the issue to an option to "EXPOSE ENCLOSURE DEVICES" on an integrare LSI 3008 supermicro HBA flashed to IT Mode...

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/netapp-ds2246-lsi-3008-it-mode-issues-in-windows-10-for-workstations.23635/

But I think they came to the wrong conclusion as this we are talking about IT Mode which most of these options normally on IR flashed cards won't show up in IT mode and as such the capability would show up as no, because there isn't a purpose to the setting. Any suggestions would be most appreaciated!

WheresMyMedia · December 3, 2020

It seems I narrowed down the issue to being a Server 2016 OS or Driver problem. How you ask? Well I wanted to test the setup with either UnRAID or FreeNas/TrueNas today, but I'm not at my office where the hardware is. So, I got the bright idea to install TrueNAS on a Hyper-V VM and passed the LSI 3008e(Lenovo N2225) HBA pcie card through to it and BAM, everything shows up in TrueNas. I can create volumes and such. I actually like being able to manage the storage infrastructure as a VM assuming the performance is up to par. I might also try installing Server 2019 on another server I have laying around to see if the problem still persists in 2019. Just out of curiosity.

Falconevo · December 3, 2020

15 hours ago, WheresMyMedia said:

I have a DS4246 with 8TB SATA drives connected to a LSI 3008e(Lenovo N2225) HBA flashed to P16 IT Mode firmware. I have this connected to a Dell RX730xd running Windows Server 2016. The HBA driver shows up as Avago Adapter, SAS3 3008 Fury - Storport . I can see all my drives in the HBA's bios likewise with any of the Storage Management Utilities such as MegaRaid and LSI Storage Authority the DS4246 and Drives all show up. I however neither see the drives under the device manager or disk management in the Windows 2016 OS. To rule out it being an issue with the 8TB drives I also installed a 2TB drive that I had lying around. I also checked that my boot support wasn't "BIOS ONLY". It's set to "BIOS & OS" which should be fine. The only things I can think of trying at this point is to set the Boot support option to "OS Only", try the same setup with UnRAID to see if I have the same issue to rule out the OS, and covering up pins A5 & A6 in case of an SMBIOS issue as is the case with some Dell HBA's that have been flashed to IT mode.

Is there anything else I can check? Is it possible that there is anything on the DS4246 that I might need set. As I understand that it's more or less just a JBOD with SAS expander when used like this. I've spent days debugging this so far. I also came across this post which appears to narrow down the issue to an option to "EXPOSE ENCLOSURE DEVICES" on an integrare LSI 3008 supermicro HBA flashed to IT Mode...

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/netapp-ds2246-lsi-3008-it-mode-issues-in-windows-10-for-workstations.23635/

But I think they came to the wrong conclusion as this we are talking about IT Mode which most of these options normally on IR flashed cards won't show up in IT mode and as such the capability would show up as no, because there isn't a purpose to the setting. Any suggestions would be most appreaciated!

When you flashed to IT mode, did you enter the original configuration for the controllers SAS address as part of the end process? I've seen this when the controllers SAS address isn't specified during the flashing process as a few guides miss it and its quite important as it provides the pathing for the pass-through to the disks (SAS Addresses) behind the controller. Some OS's don't require it to be present but Windows 2012 R2+ has always needed it.

If you are unsure what the SAS address of the controller is, it is usually labelled on the device physically (assuming the label hasn't gone awol)