Intel RS2BL080

[IT-TEchie]

Hi,

Building a brand new FreeNAS box, and because decent SATA cards are not available, have bought a Intel RAID card... I do not intend on using the RAID functionality, but I need this to be able to access the 6x 2GB Seagate's connected to it.

Can someone possibly point me in the right direction to get this working?

Whenever the card is plugged in, FreeNAS fails to start with mfi0 errors and just never comes up. Have been doing this with FreeNAS 8.0.1

If someone has the magical setup for the RAID card (how to create the drives to make it work) as well as more info on how to get this bad boy going, it would be greatly appreciated

 

[IT-TEchie]

70 views and not a single reply? Cmon guys....

 

[Milhouse]

Are you able to exchange it for an LSI 9211-8i? The 9211's work great with FreeNAS 8.0.x/FreeBSD once flashed with IT firmware.

 

[b1ghen]

I don't know if that card is possble to run in IT mode (Integrated Target) for ZFS to access the disks directly without any RAID calculations being done by the card. It might be possible to flash the card with an IT firmware if it exists, I don't have experience with this card but it seems very overkill for running it in IT mode since it's a fully fledged hardware RAID card with onboard cache and all.

 

[Milhouse]

I don't know if that card is possble to run in IT mode (Integrated Target) for ZFS to access the disks directly without any RAID calculations being done by the card. It might be possible to flash the card with an IT firmware if it exists, I don't have experience with this card but it seems very overkill for running it in IT mode since it's a fully fledged hardware RAID card with onboard cache and all.

Seems like the RS2BL080 is based on the 9260-8i. I don't think IT firmware is available for these cards, they're really too high-end to be run as simple HBA's.

If hardware RAID functionality isn't required, exchanging for a card based on the 9211-8i would be the best bet.

 

[IT-TEchie]

I really wanted ZFS to be in control of the HDD's... Where would I start looking for IT firmware for the card? The card was really just the way to get the 6 drives connected in a simple way....

 

[b1ghen]

Like Milhouse said it's doubtful that there even is IT firmware for this card. If you can't return the card I would try and sell it and for that money you could probably get at least a couple of IT capable cards instead. Or at least get one IT card and then put the extra money in more RAM or drives (although it's not the best time to buy drives).

 

[Milhouse]

Yep. These RAID-only cards are not well supported in FreebSD as the RAID drivers are more complicated and less stable than the more straightforward SAS/SATA drivers. I did get a 9240-8i (cheaper version of 9260) to work with FreeNAS through manual configuration and building the driver myself, but it wasn't particularly stable and I realised I was flogging a dead horse in terms of what I needed, so I traded it in for a 9211-8i and everything has been peachy ever since.

The 9260 based cards do not, as far as I can tell, support IT (Initiator Target) firmware (the 9240 certainly doesn't), so you'll be stuck with RAID operation which in the first place is not ideal when using ZFS, and secondly you'll have to work hard to get them to work at all. In short, the card you have is a bad choice for FreeNAS - sell it or trade it in for a 9211-8i type card. If you keep it you'll just be pulling your hair out and wishing you'd bought something else.