SOLVED Issues with SMARTD using Dell H310 with SAS passthrough

[JohnMLTX]

Hi all,

I recently inherited an old server from work, a Dell PowerEdge T320. I have FreeNAS installed and running, a Z2 volume configured, and a working Windows share.

The only issue I have now is that SMARTD throws errors of not running or failed to start.

For the H310, the manual says that passthrough is fully enabled when all the drives are set to non-raid in the system configuration, and that was done before setting up FreeNAS. And all drives are reporting basic SMART data in the BIOS and configuration menus. But FreeNAS doesn't seem to work.

Is this a problem with the specific HBA I'm using, or is this something I can fix in the FreeNAS settings?

EDIT: Flashed the LSI firmware as per a few guides around the internet, and all the drives report SMART data in FreeNAS as expected. Now, though, it's reporting two failing drives, so time to find out if it's the drives, the backplane, or the controller.

EDIT 2: Two dying drives. Damn and also hell. Oh, well. These were 5 year old 300GB SAS drives that came with this machine. And free. Fortunately, I don't actually have anything saved on any of them yet.

EDIT 3: Rebuilt using the six working drives. 300GB is not a lot of space on a drive. Like, at all. For real.

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, you seem to have the situation under control.

 

[IanBa]

Hi all,

EDIT: Flashed the LSI firmware as per a few guides around the internet, and all the drives report SMART data in FreeNAS as expected. Now, though, it's reporting two failing drives, so time to find out if it's the drives, the backplane, or the controller.

I'm curious, was this the article? https://tylermade.net/2017/06/27/ho...-lsi-9211-8i-firmware-hba-for-freenas-unraid/

I just bought one of these off lease - was an absolute steal! Did you have any issues with the lifecycle controller or IDRAC after doing this? Any downsides you've encountered? Looking to do the same as I'd really like to get smartd working - its saved my ass numerous times on my cobbled together FreeNAS.

NOTE: It is not the issue with SMART being enabled on the USB boot devices.

 

[IanBa]

I just completed this process using the article mentioned above. It worked like a champ. I had a couple of hiccups with the UEFI bios and USB boot - rather than mess with it, I just pulled the H310, put it in an older system and flashed the card there.

Now I'm up and running, SMART is functional, and all eight drives are showing as da#. In business!!