How to add drivers for an unlisted HBA

[Marc Baker]

I am trying to figure out how to install drivers for an ATTO ExpressSAS H120F. Atto does provide FreeBSD drivers. Here is a link to the ATTO product page. https://www.attotech.com/products/adapters/sas-sata/12gb/ESAH-120F-000
also a link to the driver.
https://www.attotech.com/downloads/149/driver/29299408
Thanks for the help.

 

[Yatti420]

I don't know if anybody can help you or if that's popular etc.. Just keep in mind if your the only one using it your in untested territory and if you lose your pool it because of that product no one will be able to help.. I always see the M1015 recommended.. I'm sure somebody hardware wise will chime in eventually..

 

[Mirfster]

You could always ask the devs about it, but not sure if it will get taken with FreeNas 10 in the works. Maybe ask if it would be supported in either 9.x or 10? Looks like a nice card, but eeeexspensive....

 

[Marc Baker]

Thanks for your reply. I am not dead set on using this card but I do need a 16 port 12gb SAS card. My current server is based on Windows, has 48 drives and 10gb fiber cards. The purpose of the storage server is to store data for video editing on a 10gb network. I need to get the highest speeds possible in order to serve the data up to the video edit workstations. I was hoping to migrate to freenas in order to utilize zfs and hopefully have less overhead than Windows server.

 

[Mirfster]

Are you going to be using all SSDs then?

 

[Marc Baker]

Not necessarily although I would like to implement a sizable ssd cache. Unfortunately all ssd do not provide a enough space. I am running 48 X 6tb SAS drives and 2 X 512gb SSDs. I would like to expand that to 6 X 1tb SSDs.

 

[Mirfster]

Correct me if I am wrong, but if the drives are SATA III then they are only capable of 6GB speeds. So I do not see how a 12GB HBA is going to help. I may be wrong and not counting IOPs with multiple vdevs, but that is my first feeling...

 

[Marc Baker]

They are actually 12gb SAS drives. Seagate ST6000NM0134. But a big reason for the 12gb controller was for the extra bandwidth as we expend into a 2nd and 3rd chassis that would take us up to 144 drives.

 

[Mirfster]

Ahh, guess I shouldn't have assumed :) Well, I hope you get help from the devs. Would be a shame for a beast of a card like that to not get used.

 

[Marc Baker]

How do I submit a request to the devs or do they monitor the forum?

 

[Mirfster]

Can try to file a bug and see what they say:

https://bugs.freenas.org/

 

[Marc Baker]

Ok, thanks.

 

[Mlovelace]

If the driver isn't included in the 9.3 freeBSD kernel then it will not be supported by freeNAS. That being said, you can download the freeNAS source and build a custom kernel to include the ATTO freeBSD driver (assuming the have one) then compile your custome freeNAS build.

Alternatively you can use a LSI 9300-16i card which already has driver support, is 12Gb SAS with 16 direct attach drive support. It will support a heck of a lot more drives but you'd need a SAS expander for that.

 

[Marc Baker]

I do have the FreeBSD driver for the Atto controller. Can you point me to some instructions to download the source and create a new build. I have looked around the forum and have not found a very clear answer. Thanks for your help, I appreciate it.

 

[anodos]

https://github.com/freenas/freenas

Not that I condone this course of action.

 

[Mlovelace]

Not that I condone this course of action.

+1 to this, btw. I did give the alternative of the 12Gb LSI card :)

 

[Marc Baker]

Thank you for the info and words of caution. I have already ordered the LSI card and am hoping to test it and then create a separate build to test the Atto as well.

 

[Mlovelace]

When you get the card post your test results if you don't mind. I'm still running on 6Gb SAS and am curious about moving into 12Gb.

 

[Marc Baker]

Well I got the LSI 9300-16i card in a few days ago. Freenas detected it without problem, though it did give me an alert about the firmware version. I have done some testing with 8 drives and am getting a 2.4 GBs write and a 4.9 GBs read.
The only thing that i am having trouble with that I was hoping would work is the sas2ircu command in order to activate locate LEDs. In a smaller chassis not a big deal and I always try to document slot# and sn# but it on my 48 bay chassis it shure would be nice to have this feature. Any ideas?

 

[Mirfster]

Have you looked at this thread for ideas: SuperMicro Red Light implimentation plans??