Error with two crossflashed m1015 in one system

[VlaDeMaN]

hello,

i bought 2 used m1015s, separate sources. one has a bigger heatsink, though. i crossflashed them to the lsi 9211 P20. all went without a hitch, i installed the option rom? as well, and did the cards one at a time. it seems to work as freenas sees all 16 drives!

however, when the cards are booting, there's an error saying:

"Adapter configuration may have changed, reconfiguration is suggested!"

I try to set the boot order manually but the blank one doesn't change when i press insert or delete (see pic). i can't change the boot order. i tried a whole combination of settings but nothing works, no matter what i do. if i boot a single card at a time, they each initialize just fine. otherwise with both, only one card is initialized.

running on a supermicro x10sml+-F motherboard. some oracle document i found on the googles said "This message appears if none of the information in the NVRAM is valid."

did the flash on the one cards go bad? there were no errors. should i reflash just in case? or not worry about it?

thanks in advance! i've been a loooong time lurker and the freenas forum is the bomb! a lot of valuable info, practically my manual haha.

 

[Stux]

Did you set the sas addresses on the cards again after cross flashing?

 

[Chris Moore]

You need to take the BIOS out and just have the firmware. You shouldn't be trying to boot from the SAS controller anyway.

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[VlaDeMaN]

@Stux yes i set the address on each card per their sticker.

@Chris Moore i definitely don't want to boot from it but having the card bios is nice for other settings like spin up delays, etc.

 

[Chris Moore]

@Stux yes i set the address on each card per their sticker.

@Chris Moore i definitely don't want to boot from it but having the card bios is nice for other settings like spin up delays, etc.

That's what is creating the problem.

You can use a SAS expander instead.
I think that should be the first option any time the drive count is more than 8.

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[VlaDeMaN]

@Chris Moore thanks, not using more than 8 drives per controller anyways. it's just strange because this is the first time i've had this error when i have 2 cards in a system. i'll reflash to leave out the bios i guess

 

[Chris Moore]

I think you misunderstand me, I have 20 hard drives in my primary NAS right now, all on one controller, because I'm using SAS expanders.

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[VlaDeMaN]

@Chris Moore i didn't misunderstand, i meant i am using 8 drives per controller, i didn't mean you can't use more than 8 drives. afaik you can pop on up to 256 drives with expanders. i got a good deal on the m1015s so i didn't bother using an expander.

 

[Chris Moore]

i got a good deal on the m1015s so i didn't bother using an expander.

You can get a SAS expander for $14:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-16-Por...-RAID-Expansion-Adapter-46M0997-/183195509989
and it avoids the latency of having the drives split between controllers. I got better speed out of my system when I went from two controllers (all drives direct attached) to a single controller through a SAS expander.

 

[VlaDeMaN]

Oh ok I've seen those but I snagged the controllers for about $25 each :) I did not know that there would be latency as I normally don't create volumes that span more than 1 controller. Thanks for the tip!!