It'll FreeNAS - eBay M1015 HBA and Seagate SAS drives

[Yorick]

For testing purposes, I bought an IBM M1015 "already in IT mode! FreeNAS UnRaid come buy now!" and a lot of six (6) Seagate 2TB SAS drives off eBay.

Today I got around to plugging all that in, and thought I'd share my results. It might be helpful to someone else.

Three of the drives would start badblocks, the other three would not. "invalid starting block (0): must be less than 0". Well that made no sense.
Edit: That may have been an artifact of using /dev/sgX. All drives give these error message on sgX. sdX works with badblocks. That said, the 520-byte issue below was real, and badblocks wouldn't work until it was corrected.

I have a mixed lot: Three ST32000444SS drives, and three ST2000NMCLAR2000. It was the latter that refused to do badblocks, wouldn't show up in fdisk or parted, and couldn't be added to a test pool.

It turns out they were formatted with 520 byte blocks, likely came out of an EMC array. Converting them to 512 bytes should solve that, I'm doing that now. Instructions: https://mikeyurick.com/reformat-emc...tems-520-to-512-block-size-conversion-solved/

The HBA was on version 10.00.08 and showed the Product ID as "Undefined" and the Controller as "SAS2008(??)". The Vendor was "LSI", so the eBay seller at least got it partway cross-flashed, just stopped shy of being done. I flashed it to P20, and now it's version 20.00.07, Product ID SAS9211-8i, and Controller SAS2008(B2). Better.
Question: I know Chinese knock-offs are being sold on eBay. How would I identify one of those? If it takes an LSI firmware, is it an LSI device? It shows up as as "Board Name" "IBM 6Gb perf HBA" after flash to P20. I'm assuming it's legit; it'd be good to know for sure.
Edit: Not a knockoff after all, it's likely a sweatshop pull.
This is the one I have: https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-IBM-SA...S-unRAID-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-US-seller/132748694996
It's the IBM 6Gb SAS Performance optimized HBA , as a server pull at https://www.ebay.com/itm/46M0912-IB...-PCIe-x8-LSI-SAS9200-8i-46C8937-/382957256585 .

@Stilez guide to cross-flashing at https://www.ixsystems.com/community...-lsi-9211-9300-9305-9311-hba-and-variants.54/ was easy to follow and gave me everything I needed in one convenient package. Thank you.

Getting into EFI wasn't too difficult, it just wasn't possible by choosing the USB stick as a UEFI boot device. Instead I went into UEFI Setup, Advanced, then Exit, and chose "launch EFI shell". That's on an old ASUS board.

"Grown defect list" on the three ST32000444SS drives is 25, 53 and 180 - I don't expect them to last very long. Which is okay. I wanted them for testing, not live data, and they were dirt cheap. The ST2000NMCLAR2000 have a grown defect list of 0 so far, still formatting the third one.

I'll update once re-format and then badblocks is complete, with a note on whether they became usable (I expect yes) and how badly they were damaged.

Edit: Oh goodness I think I might have a knockoff, unless there were different versions of these around.
And this is one from eGoods. Note slightly different silk screening: https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-ServeRaid-M1015-46C8933-SAS-SATA-PCI-e-RAID-CONTROLLER/282202739354
Recommendations? Can I prove with some certainty that this is or isn't a knockoff? If it is, I should likely get a refund through eBay and buy a replacement.

 

[HoneyBadger]

ST2000NMCLAR2000

A CLARiion or VNX specifically, that should be the first-gen Constellation drives (ST2000NM001, 64MB cache, potentially SED if you're lucky)

Edit: Oh goodness I think I might have a knockoff, unless there were different versions of these around.

Looks dodgy. I think you've got a fake - the part number doesn't turn anything up outside of Amazon/eBay third-party sellers and AliExpress-style sites. The heatsink is also pinned vs. finned - while that's not a definite tell it's been pretty reliable in my experience. See if you can check the serial number with Lenovo or LSI?

 

[Yorick]

See if you can check the serial number with Lenovo or LSI

Nope, Broadcom is handling RMAs for these now, but they don't have an online lookup tool.

The silk screening on the board actually looks legit. The heat sink is different, and that covers some of the silk screen. One of the stickers is in a different location, and who knows what's up with that Board Assembly ID.

It's certainly not new.
On the one hand, it might be fake.
On the other hand, that'd be a lot of effort for $35, so maybe it's just a part removed by sweatshop workers from recycled servers shipped to China.

On the gripping hand, if it survives badblocks, do I care?

 

[BR14]

For testing purposes, I bought an IBM M1015 "already in IT mode! FreeNAS UnRaid come buy now!" and a lot of six (6) Seagate 2TB SAS drives off eBay.

Today I got around to plugging all that in, and thought I'd share my results. It might be helpful to someone else.

Three of the drives would start badblocks, the other three would not. "Start block 0, needs to be less than 0". Well that made no sense.

I have a mixed lot: Three ST32000444SS drives, and three ST2000NMCLAR2000. It was the latter that refused to do badblocks, wouldn't show up in fdisk or parted, and couldn't be added to a test pool.

It turns out they were formatted with 520 byte blocks, likely came out of an EMC array. Converting them to 512 bytes should solve that, I'm doing that now. Instructions: https://mikeyurick.com/reformat-emc...tems-520-to-512-block-size-conversion-solved/

The HBA was on version 10.00.08 and showed the Product ID as "Undefined" and the Controller as "SAS2008(??)". The Vendor was "LSI", so the eBay seller at least got it partway cross-flashed, just stopped shy of being done. I flashed it to P20, and now it's version 20.00.07, Product ID SAS9211-8i, and Controller SAS2008(B2). Better.
Question: I know Chinese knock-offs are being sold on eBay. How would I identify one of those? If it takes an LSI firmware, is it an LSI device? It shows up as as "Board Name" "IBM 6Gb perf HBA" after flash to P20. I'm assuming it's legit; it'd be good to know for sure.

@Stilez guide to cross-flashing at https://www.ixsystems.com/community...-lsi-9211-9300-9305-9311-hba-and-variants.54/ was easy to follow and gave me everything I needed in one convenient package. Thank you.

Getting into EFI wasn't too difficult, it just wasn't possible by choosing the USB stick as a UEFI boot device. Instead I went into UEFI Setup, Advanced, then Exit, and chose "launch EFI shell". That's on an old ASUS board.

"Grown defect list" on these drives is between 8 and 180 - I don't expect them to last very long. Which is okay. I wanted them for testing, not live data, and they were dirt cheap.

I'll update once re-format and then badblocks is complete, with a note on whether they became usable (I expect yes) and how badly they were damaged.

Edit: Oh goodness I think I might have a knockoff, unless there were different versions of these around.
This is the one I have: https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-IBM-SA...S-unRAID-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-US-seller/132748694996
And this is one from eGoods. Note slightly different silk screening: https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-ServeRaid-M1015-46C8933-SAS-SATA-PCI-e-RAID-CONTROLLER/282202739354

Recommendations? Can I prove with some certainty that this is or isn't a knockoff? If it is, I should likely get a refund through eBay and buy a replacement.

These appear to be two different cards: 9200-8i vs 9220-8i. Maybe check servethehome for more detail.

 

[Yorick]

Oh good find. It's the IBM 6Gb SAS Performance optimized HBA , as a server pull at https://www.ebay.com/itm/46M0912-IB...-PCIe-x8-LSI-SAS9200-8i-46C8937-/382957256585 . That was an IT version of the M1015. That makes me feel better about the unit. So, likely "sweat shop pull in China", but not an actual knockoff. Which makes more sense.

I don't think it's an M1115 / 9223-8i.

It's crossflashed to 9211-8i now, that should work well for me.

 

[HoneyBadger]

As long as it's an actual OEM pull and it takes the LSI firmware, I don't think there will be an major issues. As you said; if it can survive blasting badblocks at all the drives, it's probably fit for your purpose. If you were going to build a commercial setup off of it, then I'd be a little more wary.

520bps SAS drives are super cheap - and as a bonus you know you aren't going to be getting any SMR in them. ;)

 

[Yorick]

as a bonus you know you aren't going to be getting any SMR in them

I feel like that guy in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" when I hear "SMR".
"Reinemachevrouw? .... Cleaning Woman! Cleaning Woman! *wigs out*"

 

[HoneyBadger]

I feel like that guy in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" when I hear "SMR".
"Reinemachevrouw? .... Cleaning Woman! Cleaning Woman! *wigs out*"

I'm a little more of the 1978 reaction ...

 

[Yorick]

520bps SAS drives are super cheap

No kidding. 18 bucks / drive shipped seems to be the going rate right now for 2TB SAS, though I've seen smaller lots of two with a note of "made a mistake buying SAS" for 10 bucks / drive shipped.

I've seen lots of six and ten, those seem to be the common bundles. Usually with a 30-day money-back, and "you're on your own" after that. More than fair for 18 bucks per 2TB.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Just note that anything coming from an enterprise storage array may have some custom firmware going on; while I've yet to encounter a drive that flat-out refuses to work with an LSI HBA (thanks to them being incredibly widely used in the enterprise space) I wouldn't rule it out especially in the SSD space. I believe some of the HGST Ultrastar series SSDs with Sun firmware will do this, and some Intel DC S3700s on HP FW won't negotiate faster than SATA 3.0Gbps. Caveat emptor and all.