Accessing LSI HBA from /within/ windows server 2016

[leasoncre]

Is there a way i can manage my LSI HBA RAID Controller from within windows server 2016 environment? (rebooting into BIOS is tedious and seems quite unnecessary to me just to add a hot spare or new drive configs (not removing existing arrays)....)

I've looked up some stuff from broadcom (new parent company of LSI), but none of the programs or files i downloaded and tried to install appeared to do anything.

 

i was thinking like someway to locally ssh or telnet in, but i have no idea how to flash a card from within windows without a working tool from a manufacturer.

LSI SAS 9211-8i  | https://www.starline.de/fileadmin/images/produkte/lsi/LSISAS92118i__ENG_.pdf

 

| PS. I've also considered upgrading the firmware on the device, but i'm really skeptical of doing so since none of the current support info webpages actually list this exact card as compatable. (closest listed page on broadcom's site is the 9210

| > also.. how do i download a copy of the current firmware off the card? (since if the new version for w/e reason doesn't work, it's not available online anywhere i can find)

| >> I have replied to this thread to find out how their upgrade went.. https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/779052-lsi-9211-8i-p20-firmware/

 

 

other thoughts:

upgrading bios: data loss? (wouldn't see why it would, but can see it possible)

 

 

Thanks.

[Electronics Wizardy]

They have windows software that gives you an interface to manage this in your os.

 

But why are you running a raid array on this, this is a hba, you really shouldn't use this for raid.

 

Download the megaraid storage manager here https://www.broadcom.com/support/download-search Punch in the poduct info.

 

No reason to touch firmware, but it won't affect the array at all, as the array is all on the disks.

[Windows7ge]

Even if you did flash the frimware to give you RAID support AFAIK it doesn't have any onboard memory so it'd have to share system memory or not temporarily store the data at all which is even worse. Let's say I'm wrong. The card still doesn't have a battery. In the result of catastrophic power failure you're at the mercy of the controller to not screw up the array. Without power if a block wasn't fully written to the array it will cause corruption. Is this a common failure mode? No, but I still wouldn't want to chance it. Would I personally flash an HBA to use hardware RAID? No, I'd either buy a proper card or use the HBA in a software RAID config.

[leasoncre]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

They have windows software that gives you an interface to manage this in your os.

 

Download the megaraid storage manager here https://www.broadcom.com/support/download-search Punch in the poduct info.

[[Skip to  >>> ]]

tried that. no software. https://www.broadcom.com/support/download-search/?pg=Storage+Adapters,+Controllers,+and+ICs&pf=Storage+Adapters,+Controllers,+and+ICs&pn=SAS+9210-8i+Host+Bus+Adapter&po=&pa=Software&dk=

the one thing i did find ran some cmd windows and instantly closed them.
>>>
huh.. NOWHERE does it say that the HBA's are supported by megaraid software, EXCEPT in the megaraid installer..... also.. megaraid software download is not associated with any device on thier webpage .. i had to specifically search for it on the site... soo wierd... (as opposed to the 'download search' thing)
That works

Thanks!

 

EDIT: well would ya look at that... it's already running the latest firmware

[leasoncre]

43 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Even if you did flash the frimware to give you RAID support AFAIK it doesn't have any onboard memory so it'd have to share system memory or not temporarily store the data at all which is even worse. Let's say I'm wrong. The card still doesn't have a battery. In the result of catastrophic power failure you're at the mercy of the controller to not screw up the array. Without power if a block wasn't fully written to the array it will cause corruption. Is this a common failure mode? No, but I still wouldn't want to chance it. Would I personally flash an HBA to use hardware RAID? No, I'd either buy a proper card or use the HBA in a software RAID config.

I understand the concern for the HBA not having a battery, But it's for home use on a system with an UPS with a runtime of ~20min, and i'm pretty much the only user, system auto-shuts down when battery low anyway. I definately would get a battery-capable adapter in a corprate production environment.

 

I would ask though why/how a software RAID (I'm only using raid 1/mirror with 2-3 disks) is better than a hardware raid? personally, i don't trust windows to recover a raid if the origin OS install should ever fail and need to be replaced/reinstalled.

Thanks.

[Windows7ge]

40 minutes ago, leasoncre said:

I understand the concern for the HBA not having a battery, But it's for home use on a system with an UPS with a runtime of ~20min, and i'm pretty much the only user, system auto-shuts down when battery low anyway. I definately would get a battery-capable adapter in a corprate production environment.

 

I would ask though why/how a software RAID (I'm only using raid 1/mirror with 2-3 disks) is better than a hardware raid? personally, i don't trust windows to recover a raid if the origin OS install should ever fail and need to be replaced/reinstalled.

Thanks.

Hardware RAID vs Software RAID there is no definitive better. Both have their pros & cons and which is "better" is dependent on application. If this is a very simple RAID1 of 2 or 3 drives I don't see why you have an HBA to begin with other than expandability. Desktop and server motherboards commonly have some form of hardware RAID support. You could use that.

 

Though particularly for home use in a Windows environment I'd look into a software solution like Electronics Wizardry mentioned. You do not necessarily have to use windows included RAID software but a third party software. Good software should give you the option to import arrays. It's common for arrays to have encryption, or encryption keys. If you keep track of that you should be able to recover the array even of the OS or boot drive just strait-up fail.

[Jarsky]

I'm using Windows 2016 Server. If its anything like the RAID cards e.g mines a 9271-8i, then you can use StorCLI64 which replaced MegaCLI. It's normally part of the driver installation package so you might already have it installed and just need to find where it is. I think mine was under Program Files, but I moved the files into System32 for ease of just opening a cmd window and not needing to change directory. I'm sure you could just add the path under the Windows PATH as well though in Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables  

 

https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/StorCLI

[leasoncre]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

If this is a very simple RAID1 of 2 or 3 drives I don't see why you have an HBA to begin with other than expandability. Desktop and server motherboards commonly have some form of hardware RAID support. You could use that.

 

Though particularly for home use in a Windows environment I'd look into a software solution like Electronics Wizardry mentioned.

[[short version=Expansion]] I have 12 Front bays and only 6 MOBO SATA ports, i run them in sets of 4 (though i'll likely leave one bay each empty for a while), 1 set of 4 is off the mobo anyway, leaving only 2 SATA ports unconnected.. that i'll probably attach an SSD too for caching files in the future

 

Wizard linked the LSI controller management software, it doesn't actually do any of the work. And i'm fairly familiar with windows drive management snap-in.

40 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

I'm using Windows 2016 Server. If its anything like the RAID cards e.g mines a 9271-8i, then you can use StorCLI64 which replaced MegaCLI. It's normally part of the driver installation package so you might already have it installed and just need to find where it is. I think mine was under Program Files, but I moved the files into System32 for ease of just opening a cmd window and not needing to change directory. I'm sure you could just add the path under the Windows PATH as well though in Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables  

 

https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/StorCLI

didn't see any CLI files in the program files. (just dll's)

 

the download link doesn't seem to go to a page to DL "StorCLI" .. just stuff specific to a device ... :confusedlook: ....
>some digging later> found it on broadcom's site with a sitewide search...
...and the 9211 is not a supported controller.. poop..         installer did pretty much the same thing as the other utility i tried, opend cmd promt, then immediately closed it again..

oh well..

 

Thanks.

[Jarsky]

5 minutes ago, leasoncre said:

[[short version=Expansion]] I have 12 Front bays and only 6 MOBO SATA ports, i run them in sets of 4 (though i'll likely leave one bay each empty for a while), 1 set of 4 is off the mobo anyway, leaving only 2 SATA ports unconnected.. that i'll probably attach an SSD too for caching files in the future

 

Wizard linked the LSI controller management software, it doesn't actually do any of the work. And i'm fairly familiar with windows drive management snap-in.

didn't see any CLI files in the program files. (just dll's)

 

the download link doesn't seem to go to a page to DL "StorCLI" .. just stuff specific to a device ... :confusedlook: ....
>some digging later> found it on broadcom's site with a sitewide search...
...and the 9211 is not a supported controller.. poop..         installer did pretty much the same thing as the other utility i tried, opend cmd promt, then immediately closed it again..

oh well..

 

Thanks.

 

It doesn't sound like an installer, it sounds like you're executing the shell program. Thats exactly the behavior to be expected. You don't double click shell programs. You open Command Prompt, navigate to the path of the .exe, and then execute the program commands. 

 

e.g 

 

 

 

[Windows7ge]

9 minutes ago, leasoncre said:

[[short version=Expansion]] I have 12 Front bays and only 6 MOBO SATA ports, i run them in sets of 4 (though i'll likely leave one bay each empty for a while), 1 set of 4 is off the mobo anyway, leaving only 2 SATA ports unconnected.. that i'll probably attach an SSD too for caching files in the future

Is this simply a file server or do you have it providing any other services? I don't have experience with any windows software raid options.

 

If you don't trust windows software raid or a 3rd party version for windows.

If you don't want to buy a proper hardware RAID controller (at least immediately)

If you can't get hardware RAID function on your HBA (don't recommend anyways)

I'd start to consider looking into *NIX based OS's to manage the RAID with software and run windows in a VM for any other network services it provides (all of that provided your CPU is strong enough and you have enough RAM). FreeNAS & UnRAID are among the most popular but there's also CentOS, Redhat, Ubuntu Server, you could run the RAID off those and use a VM software like ESXi (hyperv) to host it & your windows installation side by side.

[leasoncre]

50 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Is this simply a file server or do you have it providing any other services? I don't have experience with any windows software raid options.

I have ESXi on some other servers, this one happens to be doubleing as a HyperV server with one VM to manage the ESXi servers

(i'll eventually want to get better ESXi hosts.. the one's i have are maxed at 24GB Hardware ram....but that's for another day)

FreeNAS was an option i considered after i had installed windows server on it... >< .. but i want more experience with the windows envirnment, so.. i stuck with it for now

[leasoncre]

55 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

It doesn't sound like an installer, it sounds like you're executing the shell program. Thats exactly the behavior to be expected. You don't double click shell programs. You open Command Prompt, navigate to the path of the .exe, and then execute the program commands. 

I did not know they were shell-launched... i just assumed an exe was meant to be run as is... good to know.. i will try this more often

[Windows7ge]

47 minutes ago, leasoncre said:

i'll eventually want to get better ESXi hosts.. the one's i have are maxed at 24GB Hardware ram

Look into dual socket LGA2011 motherboards. You can pick one up and two Xeon 2670's for relatively cheap. RAM will cost quite a bit but right now there's some lawsuit going on over ram supplier causing price fixing so if that leads to anything maybe we'll see a price drop.

 

51 minutes ago, leasoncre said:

FreeNAS was an option i considered after i had installed windows server on it... >< .. but i want more experience with the windows envirnment, so.. i stuck with it for now

Funny. I'm the opposite. I installed FreeNAS on my server because first and foremost. It was free. Also I wanted to get some experience in the Linux/UNIX server scene. Also everybody raving about ZFS software RAID made my curious at the time although I think the first one I tried was something called Rockstor and it used BTRFS...it didn't like me or my hardware. I'm happy with FreeNAS. It has quirks with my config but still works well.

 

52 minutes ago, leasoncre said:

I did not know they were shell-launched... i just assumed an exe was meant to be run as is... good to know.. i will try this more often

So I assume you don't have much Windows experience?

 

In the windows environment things are similar to the Linux or even Mac environment. Similar to the Terminal where you can execute applications or add arguments to commands like ifconfig em0 in windows a .exe file depending on how it was coded can accept arguments in CMD (Command Prompt) some applications run in CMD automatically. Others don't like notepad. If you really wanted to you could execute notepad.exe from CMD and add arguments that would give the file a name and input data and save the file all without having the notepad GUI showup on the screen. I'd say >99% of people don't do this but you can if you really want to. In your instance this was likely a CLI (Command Line Interface) application. Sometimes the only correct way to run these is to do it from CMD. Sometimes they require arguments as well.