M1015 vs M1115

[William Bryan]

I recently purchase the M1115 to upgrade my server.

Thanks a lot! I managed to flash mine successfully.

Just a few notes:

• Try both commands sas2flash/sas2flsh and Megarec without any parameters. So you can be be sure both works in one way or another before you run them properly.
• The hard drives connected to my SAS does not seem to spin down anymore. So if that is important to you, beware.
• From what I gather there is native support for M1115 in FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE. So if you are uncomfortable with flashing stuff you can be patient and wait.
• As per BSD Now! I think they said that the next major item was to upgrade NFS from v3 to v4. So there will be migration from 9 to 10 until NFS4 is stable.

I just recently purchased an M1115 card. I'm using FreeNAS 9.10.1. If I understand bullet 3 correctly, if I download and install the FreeNAS 10 BETA, I won't have to flash the card?

Thank you,

Bill

 

[Ericloewe]

I just recently purchased an M1115 card. I'm using FreeNAS 9.10.1. If I understand bullet 3 correctly, if I download and install the FreeNAS 10 BETA, I won't have to flash the card?

No, the suggestion you read is wrong.

FreeNAS has long included the mfi driver. It doesn't mean it's a good idea to use it (quite the contrary, in fact).

 

[William Bryan]

Thank you. So to recap, I can use UEFI_BSD_P20 to flash my m1115 to LSI9211-8i in IT mode?

 

[Ericloewe]

UEFI_BSD_P20

That sounds mighty weird, is that a filename?

 

[William Bryan]

I went to avagotech.com (redirected from LSI.com) and went to their support documents and downloads page. Selected all storage controllers, adapters, and ICs and then selected SAS 9211-8i host bus adapter. Selecting search it came up with a whole list of files. Initially I selected BIOS where I found the file listed above. I just went back and selected Firmware. There I found Installer_P20_for_FreeBSD. It has instructions for the SAS2FLASH_Phase20.00.00.00. This is probably what I want?

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, you're looking for one firmware image, plus two (optional) extension ROM images. Last I checked, they weren't included in any packages other than Windows.

 

[William Bryan]

Okay. So I went to the Firmware and looked under MSDOS_Windows. There were 64 bit, x86, and DOS versions of an application called sas2flash..

 

[Ericloewe]

There were 64 bit, x86, and DOS versions of an application called sas2flash..

You don't need any of those, FreeNAS already includes sas2flash. What you do need is the firmware file, which is probably sas2008.bin or something to that effect.

If you'd rather not flash from FreeNAS, use the UEFI flasher.

 

[Stux]

FWIW, I've successfully flashed and used both an M1015 and M1115 to IT mode. For all intents, they're the same.

 

[Spearfoot]

Okay. So I went to the Firmware and looked under MSDOS_Windows. There were 64 bit, x86, and DOS versions of an application called sas2flash..

The latest version of the firmware (20.00.07.00) is only available in the 'Package_P20_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows' download available at:

https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9210-8i#downloads

This is a zip file archive; extract the IT mode firmware (\Firmware\HBA_9210_8i_IT\2108it.bin) and use either the FreeNAS sas2flash utility or the DOS version on a bootable USB drive to flash your HBA card.