high point 2720sgl

[cyberjock]

I believe your card had some fixes applied since 8.2. I recommend you try the 8.3 Beta 3 and see if your hard drives work.

 

[Shrike]

Thanks noobsauce80.

I finally got it working as it appears all I needed was the step to initialise the disks in a different system. Once I had done this, the GUI saw them immediately. I also confirmed at the same time that the missing disk on the card was actually dead.

One thing I also did notice was I cant see the serial numbers of the disks attached to the card, unlike the other disk which is connected to the on-board controller. Is there any workaround for this, and is this information visible when using the built-in hpt driver in FreeNAS 8.3.1?

Thanks all for all the information here and all the help on the forum with this card :)

 

[cyberjock]

One thing I also did notice was I cant see the serial numbers of the disks attached to the card, unlike the other disk which is connected to the on-board controller. Is there any workaround for this, and is this information visible when using the built-in hpt driver in FreeNAS 8.3.1?

I'm not sure. I do remember someone did some tweaking and provided a patch to freenas recently for your card. I'm not sure exactly what was wrong or what was fixed, but I remember the person provided the code and it was applied to the FreeNAS repositories. My advice would be to check out 8.3 beta and see what does and doesn't work. If you don't get any serial numbers you should open a ticket at support.freenas.org.

I will tell you from personal experience that you'll get the optimum fix if you can provide temporary access to a freenas machine with your card. It's quite difficult for the developers to fix something without access to the hardware. I provided SSH access to one of the great developers here and he had a fix in 45 mins.

 

[Shrike]

Thanks once again for the information and advice.

I will do some testing as you have recommended and see if this resolves the issue.

 

[Damnation]

So is this card confirmed to be working with the latest version of FreeNAS?

 

[JohnKnee]

Yes the highpoint 2720sgl has been working fine since FreeNas 8.2.1 with no extra steps required. It uses the hpt27xx driver but you will not be able to see the drive serial numbers in the disk view menu as the drives show up as daX devices. I had tried to help the developers figure out the correct syntax to make this happen but was unsuccessful.

I know that NAS4Free community has figured out the solution for this here, but am waiting for the developers to get sometime to do the same for us.

FYI please note there are two hardware versions of the RR 2720sgl card. The first hardware version released was the 2720_1x which needs to be flashed with the version 1.2 firmware to make it a non-raid card. This firmware is available here. This is the card I have and works well. No issues.

The next hardware revision released was either as a Raid card or a non-Raid card separately. But from what I have read these cards can be flashed with either firmware to change their raid status behavior. The non-Raid firmware for these cards is available here and is not compatible with the version 2720_1x cards. From what I can tell these cards work just as well as the first revision cards.

Also note, that some people have needed to format their drives in a windows/linux environment first for them to be initially recognized by the non-Raid 2720sgl but I did not have that problem.

 

[tanik1]

Hi Johnknee, I have the same card. I updated the firmware to v1.5 because they said to download the latest driver online and update before using it. Do I need to go downgrade to v1.2 then flash the non raid bios? The first link in the FYI section didn't work. But the link after it did work and that was the non raid bios v1.2. Could I just flash that to the card?

 

[JohnKnee]

@tanik1

The first link worked yesterday and now I see the whole site is down. I did manage to find it on the USA site here.

As for your question, the answer from what I remember and others from this thread is no. If you use the Raid bios, don't configure anything and preformat your drives in windows/linux just as a precaution. When I was trying to make my card work with the earlier releases of FreeNas 8.x, I had tried both the Raid and non-Raid firmware and they both worked. The only downside is that the Raid firmware hangs for a few seconds whilst the controller parses its bios to identify drives etc before the motherboard 'kicks in'.

I would leave your card on firmware v1.5 and try the above just to confirm everything works, and then if you want downgrade it to the non-Raid v1.2. so the system boots faster if you ever reboot it.

 

[tanik1]

Thanks JohnKnee its working plain and simple with the v1.5 and not doing anything in the raid bios

 

[dr.dunno]

For those interested I've done the entire process myself. I though I would just clarify the steps posted by JohnKnee above, making it easy enough to use by beginners. This was tested on FreeNAS 8.0.3 and done in Windows. Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris users should be able to figure this one out on their own and I don't know anything about Mac so good luck to those users.

Before you start, you need the following:
- A working FreeNAS 8 setup.
-- Also set the admin password (web-GUI password).
-- Go to Services -> SSH -> Tick "Login as root with password"
-- Go to Services -> Control Services -> SSH -> Slide to On

- FreeBSD 8.x kernel module for Highpoint RocketRAID 2720SGL: http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/BIOS_D....0.10.0719/rr272x_1x-bsd-8.0-v1.0.10.0719.tgz
-- OR http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/BIOS_Driver/page/rr272x_1x.htm and scroll down to FreeBSD and select the appropriate version.

- PuTTy: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
-- Download PuTTy.exe (Windows)

- WinSCP: http://winscp.net/eng/download.php
-- Download the Portable executables file (zip file)

Process:
If you are using i386/32bit then make sure to use the i386/32bit version of the driver (rr272x_1x-8.0.ko) else the x64/64bit driver should be used (rr272x_1x-8.0-amd64.ko).

Unzip the driver (rr272x_1x-8.0.ko OR rr272x_1x-8.0.ko)
Unzip WinSCP and run WinSCP.exe
You only need to change 3 lines:
-- Hostname: **Your FreeNAS host name or IP address on the LAN. eg. FreeNAS
-- Username: root
-- Password: Your Web-GUI admin login password

Now on the right pane click on the drop down "root" and select "/ <root>" then in the right pane double click tmp. Now from Windows Explorer drag rr272x_1x-8.0.ko OR rr272x_1x-8.0.ko to the right pane. Not both only the one you need.

Close WinSCP. Next up start PuTTy.exe
-- Only type the hostname/IP again and click Open
-- Username: root
-- Password: Your Web-GUI admin login password
- Type "mount -uw /" (no quotes).
- Type "mv /tmp/**drivername** /boot/kernel (**drivername** = rr272x_1x-8.0.ko OR rr272x_1x-8.0.ko)
- Type "chmod 555 /boot/kernel/**drivername**"
- Type "vi /boot/loader.conf"
- Copy either rr272x_1x-8.0-amd64_load="YES" or rr272x_1x-8.0_load="YES" into the clipboard. Depending on which driver you chose.
- Press i on PuTTy.
- Press the down key until you reach #xhci_load="YES"
- Empty line below that right click. You should now see the line you copied, pasted to what used to be a blank line.
- Press the Esc key. Then press : followed by wq.
- Now type shutdown -r now

Once the system has restarted use PuTTy again to connect to the FreeNAS instance. This time however simply type: kldstat
You should see something to the tune of:

Code:

[root@freenas] ~# kldstat
Id Refs Address            Size     Name
 1   15 0xffffffff80100000 ce4860   kernel
................
 6    1 0xffffffff80e3a000 15e38    fuse.ko
 7    1 0xffffffff80e50000 68bd0    rr272x_1x-8.0-amd64.ko

The last line being the new kernel module (driver) we added. If it is there, it was successfully loaded. You can type exit.

These steps must be repeated each time you upgrade :(

Sorry to bump this thread, but this is the best one I have found so far. How do we get the Rocket 2720SGL (so the NON-RAID version, out of the box) flashed with the most current bios version 4.0.0.1808 working? Having read the above howto, I assumed the RocketRAID drivers would also work for the NON-RAID Rocket cards, since they are technically supposed to be identical apart from the bios flashed and RocketRAIDs flashed to Rocket cards should be identical, however my card seems not to be recognized and/or I am unable to see the drives. Also creating a ZPOOL on the onboard SATA's and then transferring one or more drives to the Highpoint controller did not work. Very frustrating, as I have been messing with an Intel RS2WC080 before this card for a long time as well. And I am beginning to become very desperate to get this thing working.

I am not an Unix expert, but am able to follow howto's such as the one quoted above. Anyone able to help me out with this problem? :(

 

[cyberjock]

Doing hardware driver assistance is really hard if you don't have the hardware yourself. Sorry, but I don't have that card(but I do have a bunch of highpoint RAID controllers that do work out of the box with FreeNAS.

Keep in mind that FreeNAS 9.1 is just a few months away, and when that happens this will be broken all over again if 9.1 doesn't have support built-in. It might not be the card you want to use long term being that Highpoint seems to have very poor support with non-Windows OSes. I had a complimentary card from them to verify FreeNAS worked. I had 2 questions I sent the person that mailed me the card. Never got an answer.

My advice is to stay away from Highpoint if you can't get it working on your own and have a full grasp of what those commands do.

 

[dr.dunno]

Doing hardware driver assistance is really hard if you don't have the hardware yourself. Sorry, but I don't have that card(but I do have a bunch of highpoint RAID controllers that do work out of the box with FreeNAS.

Keep in mind that FreeNAS 9.1 is just a few months away, and when that happens this will be broken all over again if 9.1 doesn't have support built-in. It might not be the card you want to use long term being that Highpoint seems to have very poor support with non-Windows OSes. I had a complimentary card from them to verify FreeNAS worked. I had 2 questions I sent the person that mailed me the card. Never got an answer.

My advice is to stay away from Highpoint if you can't get it working on your own and have a full grasp of what those commands do.

basically bought this card because it seemed to work based on responses on this forum, after having struggled a long time with that intel controller. now i have to realize the entire series wont last a few months to freebsd9 :(

what card would you recommend that supports 8 sata3 drives and works straight out of the box or with minimal effort, being able to survive upgrades to freebsd9 without further tinkering as well? i just want zfs and full smart support through freebsd itself, that is it. to be honest, i am starting to get really fed up with all of these issues after over two weeks of ploughing through endless pages about these issues with freebsd.

ibm m1015? will it work properly with the factory default firmware or do you need to flash it to it mode to work properly with freenas smart support and all?

 

[JohnKnee]

@dr.dunno

Your card should work and has worked for others ever since FreeNAS 8.2.1 without doing anything special. See my post#46 in this thread. Can you confirm if the card is seen by FreeNAS by checking the system log or checking to see if the hpt27xx driver is loaded.

IF the card is recognized but the drives are not, then you may need to preformat them in windows or Unix before the drives are recognized. Please keep us informed as it is a good affordable card and works well with FreeNAS once you get it up and running.

 

[cyberjock]

I had some growing pains with my Areca-1280ML-24, but I've figured them(wrote code and submitted or posts in the forum for the potential pitfalls) and now I have full SMART functionality. As far as I'm concerned, it works just as well as those IBM M1015s without needing to reflash anything and has 24 ports.

 

[dr.dunno]

@dr.dunno

Your card should work and has worked for others ever since FreeNAS 8.2.1 without doing anything special. See my post#46 in this thread. Can you confirm if the card is seen by FreeNAS by checking the system log or checking to see if the hpt27xx driver is loaded.

IF the card is recognized but the drives are not, then you may need to preformat them in windows or Unix before the drives are recognized. Please keep us informed as it is a good affordable card and works well with FreeNAS once you get it up and running.

Thanks for your reply.

That is exactly what I thought, however the card was not recognized by either freenas 8.x or 9.x (tried freenas 8, 9 and even nas4free, which is freenas9 based), not even after forcing the downloaded drivers to load in the loader.conf according to the previously quoted instructions. The drives connected to the controller (8 out of 12) subsequently were not recognized as well.

Remember, my card was the non raid version right out of the box, i also flashed it to the newest version. One would think an original rocket non raid would be the same as a rocketraid flashed to non raid but apparently this is not the case, not even with crossflashing being available both ways. the freebsd drivers are only listed on highpoints rocketraid page, not the rocket download page ((which I thought would not matter as the cards would be identical when flashed to either version).

.

So does the m1015 work straight out of the box for both freenas8 and 9, or are there impediments, easy (cross flashing to IT mode) or hard? What about smart support?

After 2.5 weeks of messing about I would like to get my rig working properly ;)

 

[Vegard Kolbeinsen]

This thread is interesting, but I do not know what is what since its 3 years since last posted in. Is it still very hard to get working? Or is the driver built into FreeNAS 9.1 now?

I have a 2720SGL card today running on a windows 7 machine with a 15 TB RAID 5 with lots of stuff on it. But the hardware is old on this machine and I am now building a new server with VMware where i would like to have FreeNAS running on 1 VM.

First is it possible to move all this over into a new OS and have the same raid with all files still intact?

On the windows i can read stuff like:
HighPoint RAID Management 2.1.5.13.0415
Model Name: RocketRAID 272x_1x SAS Controller
BIOS Version: v1.5

Thanks all.

 

[cyberjock]

First is it possible to move all this over into a new OS and have the same raid with all files still intact?

No. FreeNAS only uses ZFS (other file systems are supported only enough for the OS to copy files from a disk to a zpool of your choice.

As for the current state of affairs with Highpoint, I don't know. Their support in BSD seems to be "a state of decay" and if drivers are included in current builds, I cannot promise they will exist in future builds. Highpoint stuff seems to be targeted to Windows (and Linux to a lesser extent) and not much else, so Highpoint really just isn't a particularly good "choice" for a FreeNAS, and with each passing day is "even worse of a choice".

My advice would be to not use Highpoint at all. Get the M1015 that everyone recommends right now, and sell the Highpoint on ebay if you want. I sold some of my old Highpoint stuff for more than the cost of the M1015. :D

 

[Vegard Kolbeinsen]

No. FreeNAS only uses ZFS (other file systems are supported only enough for the OS to copy files from a disk to a zpool of your choice.

As for the current state of affairs with Highpoint, I don't know. Their support in BSD seems to be "a state of decay" and if drivers are included in current builds, I cannot promise they will exist in future builds. Highpoint stuff seems to be targeted to Windows (and Linux to a lesser extent) and not much else, so Highpoint really just isn't a particularly good "choice" for a FreeNAS, and with each passing day is "even worse of a choice".

My advice would be to not use Highpoint at all. Get the M1015 that everyone recommends right now, and sell the Highpoint on ebay if you want. I sold some of my old Highpoint stuff for more than the cost of the M1015. :D

Well speaking of the devil my Raid now crashed after over 6 years of constant use. Seems to be 2 harddrives giving slowly up their life. It has started rebuilding itself but it will take 55 hours to do so, so only time will tell if i can get something out from it.

But what is the biggest benefit from running FreeNAS compared to say a W10 with some NAS software on it?

Could you link to some controllers on eBay for me to check out? I might go for a new controller now that this raid is slowly dying. Also it has to work with vmware :O

 

[cyberjock]

But what is the biggest benefit from running FreeNAS compared to say a W10 with some NAS software on it?

Sorry, that's a very protracted discussion that is inappropriate for this thread on Highpoint.

Could you link to some controllers on eBay for me to check out? I might go for a new controller now that this raid is slowly dying.

Sorry, that's a discussion that is discussed to death elsewhere. This thread is for Highpoint discussions. Please search the forums (there are plenty of stickies on your topic).

Thanks.