GhettoCloudComputing
Cadet
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2016
- Messages
- 4
I know there are alot of people that have the Poweredge C1100 and C2100 servers. Working with one of my own today I wanted to flash the LSI 1068E Mezzanine into IT Mode in order to run FreeNAS to replicate production data in case I accidentally the whole thing. Looking online there were a lot of guides on how to reflash other mezzanine cards especially Intel cards, what cards to avoid etc, but I could not find one specifically for this card. A few websites even said this flash is not possible. Here is what I did to make it work although there are some issues noted below which may make this FreeNAS incompatible based on the best practices guide. You will need a 9KKK4 Mezzanine Card with IR Firmware, a USB Drive.
Disclaimer: When modifying any firmware there is a risk you could brick your device, do this modification at your own risk.
1. Download Rufus from https://rufus.akeo.ie/
2. Using Rufus make a FreeDOS USB Drive using default settings
3. Download the SuperMicro 1068E Firmware from the SuperMicro Website Here
4. Inside the ZIP File locate the DOS Folder and copy the folders contents over to a new folder on the root of the FreeDOS USB Drive you created.
5. Disconnect all of the drives from the system, boot from the FreeDOS USB Drive.
6. Navigate to the folder you created on the FreeDOS USB Drive and exec the L8iLP_IT.BAT file.
7. The system will now perform what should look like a pretty standard Firmware Upgrade for an LSI Card. However it's going to get to the end where its verifying the firmware update and the system lock the system up, the yellow trouble light on the front of the server will light up. After letting it sit for 10 minutes I rebooted it. 8. Upon reboot I was greeted with the device reported as an HBA on Device 0 and no options for RAID settings.
On a side note this also seemed to have the side effect of fixing the issue with the card being unable to detect 1TB+ drives.
I have not done any performance testing, but I was able to verify that smartctl is able to read the data from the drives. FreeNAS, or more likely FreeBSD, however seems to still want to handle this device as a RAID card as it is loading via the MPT driver instead of the MPS one which is understood as no bueno. Is there something that can be modified at boot to see if this device is operable under the MPS driver?
Disclaimer: When modifying any firmware there is a risk you could brick your device, do this modification at your own risk.
1. Download Rufus from https://rufus.akeo.ie/
2. Using Rufus make a FreeDOS USB Drive using default settings
3. Download the SuperMicro 1068E Firmware from the SuperMicro Website Here
4. Inside the ZIP File locate the DOS Folder and copy the folders contents over to a new folder on the root of the FreeDOS USB Drive you created.
5. Disconnect all of the drives from the system, boot from the FreeDOS USB Drive.
6. Navigate to the folder you created on the FreeDOS USB Drive and exec the L8iLP_IT.BAT file.
7. The system will now perform what should look like a pretty standard Firmware Upgrade for an LSI Card. However it's going to get to the end where its verifying the firmware update and the system lock the system up, the yellow trouble light on the front of the server will light up. After letting it sit for 10 minutes I rebooted it. 8. Upon reboot I was greeted with the device reported as an HBA on Device 0 and no options for RAID settings.
On a side note this also seemed to have the side effect of fixing the issue with the card being unable to detect 1TB+ drives.
I have not done any performance testing, but I was able to verify that smartctl is able to read the data from the drives. FreeNAS, or more likely FreeBSD, however seems to still want to handle this device as a RAID card as it is loading via the MPT driver instead of the MPS one which is understood as no bueno. Is there something that can be modified at boot to see if this device is operable under the MPS driver?
