LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

[dJabba]

First of all Hi and thanks for reading. I'll prolly ask a couple "stupid" questions and you might hit your head a couple of times, but I rather ask once to much :)

Got around to rebuilding my HTNAS and now it uses a LSI 9240-8i (IBM branded ServeRAID M1015) SAS 8port controller (75euro on eBay). So far so good. It's running fine detecting the current 5 attached HDDs as 5 JBODs.

Installing the 5.2.112 Windows Signed drivers works fine, But I also tried to install the Windows managing software. This however throws me an error on each bootup with init failures and recovery .. worries me a bit, but I just un-installed it again so the pop-up doesn't bother me - should I worry 'bout this? or is it just cause I haven't configured any RAIDs?

I'd like to flash it with a newer firmware, as the one on it is quite old. Using this Link Firmware Update IBM ServeRAID M1015 and the a DOS bootcd, It shouldn't be a problem. (I think)
But I always read about using IT firmware instead when you don't need the RAID functions, as I don't. I couldn't find any info on that in relation to this card... Any might know something there?

As it automatic detects the 5 HDDs as 5 JBODs, should I do any other changes in the cards BIOS? I just want it to act as a "stupid" SATA controller.

Anything else I'd need to pay attention to or change? Any input is welcome.

[Acebmxer]

re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

I just ordered this card for my self. I already have a true lsi 9240-4i which works great. My m1015 should be here tomorrow and i can test you for then.

Have you looked at this site? IBM ServeRAID M1015 Part 4: Cross flashing to a LSI9211-8i in IT or IR mode | ServeTheHome Intel Xeon AMD Opteron RAID Controller Reviews I plan to use raid10 with my card with 4x 2tb drives and 1x1.5tb jbod as a backup drive. this card will be passthrough Vmware to a win2k8 r2 server, but I can try it on the same system with win7 directly.

I was thinking of flashing the 9240-8i firmware as I was planing on using raid.

[dJabba]

re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

That link is kinda perfect. Answers most my questions. I had a unrecoverable bootpartition crash this morning after a mainboard BIOS update, so in the progress of reinstalling atm (was easier at the current point then anything else). But with this link I'm confident that I won't run into to many problems and it defenetly answers my IT question. :)

I'm very happy with the controller. Plugged it in and attached HDD docks, booted up and worked right away as it should. Turned on the HDDs one by one and it found them all as JBODs (have old data on em). Booted into windows, installed drivers and windows found all drives. One of the better purchases I've done lately.

[Acebmxer]

re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

I am glad that helped you out. So what firmware are you using now on your card?

[dJabba]

re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

atm the default IBM RAID firmware it came with:

Version 4.24.00 (Build March 03, 2011)
FW package 20.10.1-0036

[Acebmxer]

re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

Well I just got my controller and having a couple of issues. I connected 2 Hitachi 500Gb sata3 drives to the M1015. Just noticed your title says M1050 was this a typo? The card shows 2 drives connected as Jbod but it would not enter the web bios. Once in windows I installed LSI drivers and he see's the card as ServRAID M1015 in Device Manager. One of the 2 drives was already formatted as NTFS mbr and was seen again by windows along with the other drive just not formatted. I tried to use MSM 11.08.03.03 to connect to the card and it lets me login but never connects just sits a blank screen with a gray spinning circle.

[dJabba]

re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

It's ofcourse the ServeRAID M1015, typo.

Do you have more then one card in the system? I read in one of the BSD forums about a guy having trouble until he flashed them with newest firmware one by one.

Had no trouble entering the bios at startup at any point, just pressed the combo displayed (have Force BIOS enabled in mainboards BIOS, just in case thats important, but I think thats just a visual aspect)

Have 4 Seagate SV35.5 2TB and 1x Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB connected to it at this point

[Acebmxer]

Re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

Ok after a bunch of fiddling around I finally got it working. It was something of a slight compatibly issue with gigabyte and marvell controller. I had to disable the marvell controller from the bios then I was able to enter the bios. I also updated to the latest LSI 9240-8i firmware while I was at it, this was all in the X58A-OC board. Now the card is in the X58A-UD5 and everything is working now sorta. I still have issues trying to enter the WebBios but I can not manage the cards/array with the MSM software.

Still doing some test but not happy at all with the write speed of the 9240-4i and 3x500gb hitachi sata3 drives.

[dJabba]

Re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

Oh the joys of intel boards and anything else but gaming rigs ... Have read so many bad things about these combos prior to my purchase last year and why I went for an AMD build for this rig :) Good you found a workaround to setup and flash your card though in another rig, even though it isn't the optimal solution.

As posted prior, I couldn't get the MSM software to work either here, different reason though as it seems. I don't know when I'll get around to flash it with IT firmware yet as my life has become quite busy lately and I'm kinda scared to do it .. had to reinstall 4 times the past week cause of misc things .. now it runs again and don't want to have to start over .. hehehe.

I did however notice slower transfer speeds then on my native AMD sata3 ports. This raid controller gives me around 90mb/s where I got around 107mb/s disk to disk when using onboard. This could however be cause the disks run as JBOD via the RAID controller instead of via a IT controller.
Now speed really isn't an issue for me though, as its mainly a NAS for my media files and rarely has more connections then me streaming to 2-3 devices at once.

[dJabba]

Re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

could use a little help again, as I managed to delete the ROM of my controller but can't flash a new due to the mainboards option-rom size (as far as I could find out). According to the web I got 2 options, use a different system or an EFI shell.

I found the EFI flash tool on the LSI website (Installer_P21_for_EFI), but it has 3 versions and I don't know what one to use. The DL doesn't come with any useful information.

- sasflash_efi_bios32_rel
- sasflash_efi_ebc_rel
- sasflash_efi_sal64_rel

Just to sum it up again

Mainboard: Asus F1A75-I Deluxe
Controller: IBM ServeRAID M1015

Trying to flash it to LSI9211-IT mode, using this article and files: SAS2008 (LSI9240/9211) Firmware files - Projects, Tools, Utilities & Customized INFs - LaptopVideo2Go Forums

Thanks in advance - never used the EFI shell before but assuming its like any other shell

[Edit]
Nevermind .. seems my board doesn't have an EFI shell, was sure it did. Guess I just have to option to try and flash it in another system

[dJabba]

Re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

My old Gigabyte M68M-S2P AM2 board had no trouble flashing it at all. I had to get a newer version of sas2flsh though, as it seems there had been a sub-rev. change so the one included in the package mentioned in the previous post didn't work.

Had it boot up into the old windows installation with new IT drivers without any trouble and runs perfectly as SATA controller now without any raid or bios to halt up boot times.

[Acebmxer]

Re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

I think my m1015 is flaking out. the system is running ESXi and the controller is being passed to a VM and in the VM it was getting error 10 can not start device in device manager. Then I was getting a firmware error at one point. I tried to reflash card and that didnt help, I tried to pretend I crossed flashed but wanted to flash it back to original state and that almost looked promising. I grabbed a hdd that still had windows on it and booted off that still same problem. I tried booting with the drives disconnected, then I tried moving the drives from the other controller to this controller and then bam the controller started to work. I swapped back the drives and then the controller stopped working again. So I put the other drives back onto the M1015 along with its set of drives and bam the controller works and I can see both sets of arrays.

I am in the process of backing up all my data while I can still see and access the stuff. Then probably brake the array and try to recreate it as it seems to be the arrays problem or hdd instead of the controller. I have a bid on another controller on ebay, if I do recover from this I may still try to get the controller and keep it as a spare. I can not afford to lose close to 1tb of movies pics and other data.

[dJabba]

Re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

I'm prolly going to get me a spare controller as well, at that price it would almost be stupid not to. But sad yours is giving trouble. Hope you get your array fixed again.

I'm very happy with my crossflashing. I got the 20mb/s transfer speed back I had lost from the native SATA to the Raid card. Up to 110 MB/s with windows on copy function disk to disk again.

Lately I freed up 3 extra HDDs (1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB), so moving/copying files around to suit better atm. Good controller test anyway.

[Namtaro]

Re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

Hello, I've been researching a bit on the IBM M1015 myself and was set to buy one until someone mentioned that raid cards tend to be finicky with motherboards.

Did you guys check compatibility or is this a non-issue?

I would be using this on a Asus P5K. I wanted to setup a media server with 4x3TB drives in Raid5.

[dJabba]

Re: LSI 9240-8i (IBM M1015) First time ever dealing with "real" raid controller, couple questions

Only thing you gotta make sure is that it has drivers for the OS you want to use, that isn't always the case. Rest shouldn't be a problem. Only place it could become a problem is if/when you flash it, if your mainboard has enough optionROM to do so. An EFI shell also makes it easier for most cards (can safe yourself the hassle of making a DOS USB stick), but that's just a benefit.

Personally I didn't do any research in that area .. except the aforementioned driver thing