HDD's connected to HBA don't show up

[gyorfitam]

I'm trying to build a NAS and the recommendation was to use an HBA if I want to use more hard drives. I bought a 9211-8i, connected 8 SATA hard drives to it but I don't see any signs of it working. According to the seller "It has been flashed to the latest IT Mode firmware". Am I supposed to do anything else or it should just show up in TrueNAS after installation? The TrueNAS installation is completely new so I haven't changed anything yet and it's installed to an NVME SSD.

 

[NugentS]

Can you see any drives if you go into the LSI (Avago) BIOS on boot?
If not then it suggests that either the card is knackered OR you are using the wrong cables / haven't plugged something in correctly.

 

[gyorfitam]

Can you see any drives if you go into the LSI (Avago) BIOS on boot?
If not then it suggests that either the card is knackered OR you are using the wrong cables / haven't plugged something in correctly.

How can I go into that BIOS?

 

[NugentS]

Normally Control C or S during the boot sequence

 

[gyorfitam]

I put it into the top PCI-E slot and now it works actually. But now I don't have graphics card this way since the bottom one doesn't want to work for some reason with either the HBA or the graphics card. It's an Asrock B450 Steel Legend motherboard. Am I supposed to setup something so both PCI-E x16 slots would work simultaneously (I would like to add 10gbit LAN later)?

 

[gyorfitam]

Normally Control C or S during the boot sequence

So... actually I can't really check it since I can't have both HBA and the graphics card working together at the same time.

 

[jgreco]

When you are booting up, the BIOS will report the card's firmware version during POST. Some cards do not have their BIOS ROM flashed; I think that's a bad idea, because it lets you safely check on versions and connectivity outside of the UNIX environment. But opinions vary.

When the OS boots, it will also report it in the file /var/run/dmesg.boot, such as

mps0: <Avago Technologies (LSI) SAS2008> port 0x4000-0x40ff mem 0xfd3f0000-0xfd3fffff,0xfd380000-0xfd3bffff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci3
mps0: Firmware: 20.00.07.00, Driver: 21.02.00.00-fbsd
mps0: IOCCapabilities: 1285c<ScsiTaskFull,DiagTrace,SnapBuf,EEDP,TransRetry,EventReplay,HostDisc>

You can also check at the FreeNAS CLI.

# mpsutil show adapter
mps0 Adapter:
Board Name: SAS9211-8i
Board Assembly:
Chip Name: LSISAS2008
Chip Revision: ALL
BIOS Revision: 7.31.00.00
Firmware Revision: 20.00.07.00
Integrated RAID: no

PhyNum CtlrHandle DevHandle Disabled Speed Min Max Device
0 0003 000b N 6.0 1.5 6.0 SAS Initiator
1 0006 000e N 6.0 1.5 6.0 SAS Initiator
2 0008 0010 N 6.0 1.5 6.0 SAS Initiator
3 0002 000a N 6.0 1.5 6.0 SAS Initiator
4 0005 000d N 6.0 1.5 6.0 SAS Initiator
5 0007 000f N 6.0 1.5 6.0 SAS Initiator
6 0001 0009 N 6.0 1.5 6.0 SAS Initiator
7 0004 000c N 6.0 1.5 6.0 SAS Initiator

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

There's already a graphics device on the board. Why do you want to plug in an extra graphics card? Have you checked that the board supports ECC memory? I would be more concerned about that.

 

[NugentS]

From the specs on your motherboard

AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Vermeer, Matisse, Cezanne, Renoir, Summit Ridge and Pinnacle Ridge) - 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1: x16 mode; PCIE4: x4 mode)* AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Picasso, Raven Ridge) - 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1: x8 mode; PCIE4: x4 mode) (If you use Athlon 2xxGE series APU, PCIE1 slot will run at x4 mode.) AMD Athlon series CPUs - 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1: x4 mode; PCIE4: x2 mode)* - 4 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 Slots - Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™** *Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks If M2_1 is occupied, PCIE4 will be disabled.

Do you have a NVMe device in M2_1?

 

[NugentS]

I think we need a proper hardware spec please. Full and in detail

 

[Etorix]

@Patrick M. Hausen Which graphics device? This is a consumer (gamer) board, there's no IPMI, and no iGPU unless @gyorfitam uses a Ryzen xxxxG CPU. We indeed need full disclosure here.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I just clicked on the link and read "Graphics Output: DisplayPort, HDMI". Sorry if I mislead anyone. I don't have much experience with desktop and consumer gear. All my systems have VGA output by whatever cheap graphics device the slap on server mainboards today. And IPMI.

 

[gyorfitam]

There's already a graphics device on the board. Why do you want to plug in an extra graphics card? Have you checked that the board supports ECC memory? I would be more concerned about that.

Since I'm using a Ryzen 5 CPU, it doesn't have iGPU built-in. I would go with an Athlon but I read that only the Ryzens are supporting ECC. Since it's not a server grade solution, it's a little bit unusual configuration for a NAS but according to my research, it should work quite well for this purpose. So yes, ECC supposed to work in this system.

 

[gyorfitam]

From the specs on your motherboard

AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Vermeer, Matisse, Cezanne, Renoir, Summit Ridge and Pinnacle Ridge) - 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1: x16 mode; PCIE4: x4 mode)* AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Picasso, Raven Ridge) - 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1: x8 mode; PCIE4: x4 mode) (If you use Athlon 2xxGE series APU, PCIE1 slot will run at x4 mode.) AMD Athlon series CPUs - 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1: x4 mode; PCIE4: x2 mode)* - 4 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 Slots - Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™** *Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks If M2_1 is occupied, PCIE4 will be disabled.

Do you have a NVMe device in M2_1?

Yes, I mean that's the one with the built-in heatsink, so seemed logical to me to use it. Wow, I was not aware of the existence of such messing around. I mean it's a consumer platform, I get it. I will try the M2_2, not sure though if I can use that slot for booting.

 

[gyorfitam]

I think we need a proper hardware spec please. Full and in detail

Asrock B450 Steel Legend motherboard
Ryzen 5 1400 CPU
2x Timetec Hynix IC 8GB DDR4 2400MHz Unbuffered ECC
IBM ServeRAID M5110 HBA + 8x 2TB WD Red and Purple drives
Transcend 110s 128GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe as boot drive
I bought a random Nvidia GT710 to have display output

 

[jgreco]

IBM ServeRAID M5110 HBA + 8x 2TB WD Red and Purple drives

From IBM:

The ServeRAID M5110 and M5110e SAS/SATA controllers are 6 Gb SAS/SATA internal RAID controllers.

Calling the M5110 an HBA in your hardware description does not magically make it so. It is not an HBA. It is a RAID controller. WIthout looking too hard, I'm guessing a LSI SAS2208 based one. Definitely NOT an HBA.

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

www.truenas.com

 

[gyorfitam]

From IBM:

The ServeRAID M5110 and M5110e SAS/SATA controllers are 6 Gb SAS/SATA internal RAID controllers.

Calling the M5110 an HBA in your hardware description does not magically make it so. It is not an HBA. It is a RAID controller. WIthout looking too hard, I'm guessing a LSI SAS2208 based one. Definitely NOT an HBA.

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

www.truenas.com

Here's the link where I bought it from: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303920896830
And I believe this is what happened to this card: Cross-Flash IBM ServRAID M5110 and H1110 to IT HBA Mode

 

[ClassicGOD]

Here's the link where I bought it from: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303920896830
And I believe this is what happened to this card: Cross-Flash IBM ServRAID M5110 and H1110 to IT HBA Mode

If you want to verify that it was flashed you should be able to run

Code:

sas2flash -list

from TrueNAS cli to verify if it is running standard LSI IT mode firmware.
You are looking for "Firmware Product ID" line - if there is (IT) after the firmware version number then the card is running IT firmware

 

[gyorfitam]

If you want to verify that it was flashed you should be able to run

Code:

sas2flash -list

from TrueNAS cli to verify if it is running standard LSI IT mode firmware.
You are looking for "Firmware Product ID" line - if there is (IT) after the firmware version number then the card is running IT firmware

Firmware Product ID : 0x2214 (IT)
I guess that's a success.

 

[jgreco]

Here's the link where I bought it from: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303920896830
And I believe this is what happened to this card: Cross-Flash IBM ServRAID M5110 and H1110 to IT HBA Mode

Okay, well, it's possible. The RAID cards and the HBA's share a common compute platform, but people must be desperate to sell these if they're willing to lobotomize a relatively decent hardware RAID controller and make it into a mere HBA.

I know that ESXi has deprecated the LSI 6Gbps stuff in ESXi 7, but people keep telling me that "no one uses RAID cards" with ESXi and everyone uses SAN storage. Hm.