SOLVED 11 HDDs is the limit!

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{HD}

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93ED638D-EDBE-4D84-99E1-B04218993D2A.jpeg Seems to be having issues...
 

Chris Moore

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I am not sure if you looked at this guide or some other guide:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...o-crossflashing-lsi-9211-hba-and-variants.54/

You might want to go back and erase that card and start again. That output doesn't look right.
Look for this section in the link above:
Code:
FLASHABLE SOFTWARES ("BOOT ROM/BIOS" AND "FIRMWARE"): Confusingly, the 9211 cards have their flashable files in *two* parts. There are bios and efi "roms" that provides boot-time options, and these are *separate* files independent from the "firmware" (the part that actually controls the disks and responds to the OS). For the boot roms one can flash a BIOS orom, an EFI boot rom, or neither or both (as they can coexist).

For HBA use such as FreeNAS, only the "firmware" part matters. You don't need to flash the orom or EFI rom. The boot roms are completely optional and while nice, it slows boot and doesn't add anything really. It can be flashed later if you change your mind. You do *not* need to flash the bios/efi boot roms to get a fully functional card.
 

{HD}

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IMG_0013 (1).jpg Here is the output of -list on the new HBA that I flashed today. I did not have time to play with it much more so, I just put my original HBA back in.
 
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Chris Moore

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You might want to take the "SOLVED" flag off the thread so that other people might look at this.
 

digity

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What am I missing here? Why not resolve the 11 drive max issue by simply changing Boot Support to OS Only?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 

{HD}

Dabbler
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What am I missing here? Why not resolve the 11 drive max issue by simply changing Boot Support to OS Only?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
That seems like a reasonable idea. Perhaps I will start a new thread for the functionality of the 9211-8i without bios since the title of this thread has technically been solved.
 

digity

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Scratch that - NOT solved. FreeNAS crashed again within two days of successfully booting from USB with 12 or more drives and the controller's Boot Support set to OS only. The server also stopped booting from USB again. Is Supermicro mobos the culprit? This generation (X8xxx)? The combo of these mobos and 9211-8i and/or Intel SAS Expander? Any other ideas?
 

{HD}

Dabbler
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Scratch that - NOT solved. FreeNAS crashed again within two days of successfully booting from USB with 12 or more drives and the controller's Boot Support set to OS only. The server also stopped booting from USB again. Is Supermicro mobos the culprit? This generation (X8xxx)? The combo of these mobos and 9211-8i and/or Intel SAS Expander? Any other ideas?

My original problem was freenas failing to recognize 'all' the drives because of the HBA BIOS. I fixed that a long time ago by changing the 9211-8i bios settings. Sounds like you have a bad USB port or maybe a mobo bios issue. I am successfully booting from mirrored USB thumb-drives. Perhaps at this point start a new thread and copy some of your startup output so we can see what is going on.
 

digity

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My original problem was freenas failing to recognize 'all' the drives because of the HBA BIOS. I fixed that a long time ago by changing the 9211-8i bios settings. Sounds like you have a bad USB port or maybe a mobo bios issue. I am successfully booting from mirrored USB thumb-drives. Perhaps at this point start a new thread and copy some of your startup output so we can see what is going on.
Sorry, with all the noise it's hard to decipher what exactly was your fix. Exactly what change did you make to your 9211-8i BIOS settings?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 
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