SOLVED ESXi is only passing-thru 4 of 6 drives via SAS

[George777]

I am setting up FreeNAS for the first time with ESXi 6.0. I've read as much as I possibly can and feel fairly confident with this setup. I am running this ASrock motherboard E3C224D4I-14S which has an onboard LSI 2308 that powers 8 x SAS2 from 2 x mini SAS 8087 connectors. I flashed my LSI2308 into IT mode (v20) using the latest software posted on the ASRock website. Unfortunately, during the first run of that software it wiped the firmware before I could read back the SAS address. Some other sites mentioned I can use straight 0s instead if I lost the SAS address, so I went ahead and did that.

Now, I have FreeNAS running via ESXi and I successfully passed-thru the LSI2308. Unfortunately, FreeNAS can only see four of the six drives I've connected via the SAS8087 connectors. Some additional troubleshooting shows that my missing two drives are showing up as normally connected ATA disks in ESXi (!?!). I went back and tracked down those two drives, and sure enough, the four working drives are on one SAS8087 connector, the two missing drives are on another.

Does anyone know what I did wrong? It's as if the two other drives are connected to the mobo via normal SATA cables. Do I need to reflash my LSI2308? Should I spend time trying to recover my lost SAS address? Sorry if this duplicates any other threads, I tried really hard to find similar threads/problems, but can't find any keywords that bring this issue up.

 

[ChriZ]

Have you already tried the simplest troubleshooting step?
I mean to swap the 8087 cables and see if the problem remains?

 

[jgreco]

No, straight 0's is pretty idiotic. You've now discovered some sites whose advice you can disregard. It's fine to make up a number randomly, but there's a reason they're called a WWN - it should be something else no one is *likely* to have and it should not be something obvious like all zeroes, all ones, etc. which could collide.

There's no way I know of for a device that has been passed through to present to both ESXi and to FreeNAS. Those drives 5 and 6 are hooked up to the PCH ports. Go check what ports ESXi thinks they're hooked up to. Go to Configuration->Hardware->Storage Adapters->Details for one of the affected devices and tell us the model of the controller plus any other interesting details. When it tells you that you're hooked up to the Lynx Point AHCI Controller, then you should move the disks to the other ports on the 2308.

 

[jgreco]

Also, come to think of it, there's more than a 50/50 chance the WWN is on the box or on the board itself.

 

[George777]

There's no way I know of for a device that has been passed through to present to both ESXi and to FreeNAS. Those drives 5 and 6 are hooked up to the PCH ports. Go check what ports ESXi thinks they're hooked up to. Go to Configuration->Hardware->Storage Adapters->Details for one of the affected devices and tell us the model of the controller plus any other interesting details. When it tells you that you're hooked up to the Lynx Point AHCI Controller, then you should move the disks to the other ports on the 2308.

Thank you jgreco! Your description was exactly spot on. I didn't get far enough down on the mother board description and missed this on page 22.

Mini-SAS Connectors (SAS_0_3) (SAS_4_7) (see p.7, No. 15, 21)
These two connectors are used to connect the mini-SAS ports on the backplanes.

Mini-SAS/SATA Connector (SATA_0_3) (see p.7, No. 13)
This connector is used to connect the SATA port on the backplane.

Source: http://66.226.78.22/downloadsite/Manual/E3C224D4I-14S.pdf

I'm marking this closed, but I'm still going to try and recover/reflash the WWN. Thank you again!

 

[jgreco]

Yeah, please do make sure to add a WWN. I'd like to beat the #!*!$#* out of the idiots who say an all zero WWN is fine, because sooner or later someone ends up with two controllers both with the same WWN and their SAS topology breaks, and then they lose a lot of time trying to figure out what's gone wrong.