Recommended HBA for ZFS, contemporary

[Rich]

The reason they don't provide a source is that Megarec is one of those
tools that is theoretically only provided to OEMs or people who sign
contracts with LSI (AFAIK), but other than that, the other tools are all
readily available from LSI's site. (SAS2IRCU also used to be similarly hard
to find, but they've fortunately stopped that.)

I've just got my own FreeDOS image with sas2flsh, megarec for DOS, and
megacli, and it works perfectly fine with those instructions. If it makes
you itchy, cut your own FreeDOS image and lob those binaries from LSI's
site and $OTHER_SOURCE for megarec and then go to town.

(You don't need megarec for crossflashing between IR/IT on an HBA, though,
that's solely for when you're convincing an "actual" RAID card that it's
just a dumb HBA.)

- Rich

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 8:52 PM, Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 22 Aug 2016, Karl Denninger wrote:
>
> I have a number of the Intel 6-port expanders in production servers and
>> have never have had any trouble with them; they just plain work.  The
>> only note I'll make on the expanders (and these host cards) is to make
>> sure you have sufficient airflow in the chassis; they're passive
>> heat-sink cooled so airflow matters.  In any sort of proper server
>> chassis this is probably not going to be an issue but if you're going
>> for something that doesn't sound like an old 707 jet on take-off you
>> need to pay attention to make sure there's sufficient cooling airflow.
>>
>
> There is an article on converting the Dell H200/H310 cards to LSI 9211
> where they show a picture of a fan mounted on the heatsink but do not
> discuss it:
>
> https://techmattr.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/updated-sas-hba-
> crossflashing-or-flashing-to-it-mode-dell-perc-h200-and-h310/
>
> I'm not happy with that article because it says "here is a CD of all the
> firmware and tools you need", but does not list sources to download them
> yourself .  Call me crazy, but that makes me nervous.
>
> Anyway, I tried touching the heatsink of my new/used H200 while the card
> was idle, and yes, it gets surprisingly hot.  Untouchably hot, some would
> say.  A 40mm fan fits perfectly.  The standard trick of using screws that
> just fit between the fins and bite in a little works.  Like most, it was a
> 12V fan, but did not need that much power for this job. At 5V, it runs and
> keeps the heatsink cool enough to touch.
>
> I have another H200 to convert, and mean to document the process.  I also
> have vendor sources for the files required.
>
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-fs at freebsd.org mailing list
> https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-fs
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-fs-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>