I am using TrueNAS as a VM in ESXi and moved my drives from a R720xd that has worked well for many years, to a MD1200 connected to a R720, that has worked well in testing with spare SAS drives I had. Initially I was using a H200e that I crossflashed, but soon as I started using the pool the VM would power off (crash). Trying to reboot I would get the "door bell handshake failed", unless I removed the H200e from the VM. I had another H200e that I also had crossflashed to LSI firmware. So I tried the 2nd card, but it gave no different results.
After reading all the threads I could find about this fault, and trying lower RAM amounts, but still it would crash. I settled on TrueNAS13 just not playing well with my SAS2008 for some reason and I ordered a LSI 9207-8e (LSAS2308), then moved my drives back to the R720xd to wait for it to arrive.
Okay, now it came in and I installed it today, then moved the drives back over to the MD1200. Within a few minutes of getting everything back online and utilizing it, the VM crashed like it had with the H200e card. I rebooted the TrueNAS VM and everything went back to normal, without getting the door bell handshake error that I would get from the H200e. At this point I come to realize the SAS2008 card may have been giving that error on reboot, but the initial problem is not related to the card, just that the SAS2008 gets stuck that way unless the host if rebooted while the SAS2308 does not. Probably a mistake/misunderstanding I am making on how I have things.
At this point I unplug one of the two cables between the LSI card and MD1200. TrueNAS has now been running for about 15minutes with no issue while I type this up.
Now, what am I doing wrong... The MD1200 has a switch on it to be set for single or split, I have that set to single since I am using a single host. I am using 10 SATA drives, so I understand the two MD1200 controllers can not split traffic off the drives to the LSI card. I had the understanding that the two cable connections and two controllers would just be handled as redundant paths, sure my LSI card is still a single failure point though... Seeing how having both cables hooked up may contribute to the TrueNAS crash, tells me I am mistaken there...
After reading all the threads I could find about this fault, and trying lower RAM amounts, but still it would crash. I settled on TrueNAS13 just not playing well with my SAS2008 for some reason and I ordered a LSI 9207-8e (LSAS2308), then moved my drives back to the R720xd to wait for it to arrive.
Okay, now it came in and I installed it today, then moved the drives back over to the MD1200. Within a few minutes of getting everything back online and utilizing it, the VM crashed like it had with the H200e card. I rebooted the TrueNAS VM and everything went back to normal, without getting the door bell handshake error that I would get from the H200e. At this point I come to realize the SAS2008 card may have been giving that error on reboot, but the initial problem is not related to the card, just that the SAS2008 gets stuck that way unless the host if rebooted while the SAS2308 does not. Probably a mistake/misunderstanding I am making on how I have things.
At this point I unplug one of the two cables between the LSI card and MD1200. TrueNAS has now been running for about 15minutes with no issue while I type this up.
Now, what am I doing wrong... The MD1200 has a switch on it to be set for single or split, I have that set to single since I am using a single host. I am using 10 SATA drives, so I understand the two MD1200 controllers can not split traffic off the drives to the LSI card. I had the understanding that the two cable connections and two controllers would just be handled as redundant paths, sure my LSI card is still a single failure point though... Seeing how having both cables hooked up may contribute to the TrueNAS crash, tells me I am mistaken there...
Last edited: