New install - install hanging after Adaptec 2805 card

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Thanks for the thread. It looks like I either pay $200+ on Amazon or New Egg, or take a chance with shipment directly from China for usually $99 BUT that means I must wait until after Thanksgiving to get up & running. I'm not thrilled, but $ vs $$$ does weigh heavily. I did find a Fujitsu labeled card with the same chipset and features for $64.99 plus $6 shipping (from China, natch). That's not bad. I hear that I do need to flash the card to IT mode. Hopefully, that won't brick it!

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

There's a dude on eBay who is selling "FreeNAS ready" LSI 9211-8i cards for $109, meaning that he has already flashed it to IT mode and the card is ready to go, ships from the USA. Something to think about . . .

 

[Fuganater]

There's a dude on eBay who is selling "FreeNAS ready" LSI 9211-8i cards for $99, meaning that he has already flashed it to IT mode and the card is ready to go, ships from the USA. Something to think about . . .

Flashing it takes 5 minutes.

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

So, the next to LAST question on this topic: There is a Fujitsu version of the LSI 9211-8i card that fits my bill for $64.99 + $6 to ship from China, but it won't arrive until the first of December (& no option for speedier albeit more expensive shipping). I would likely have to flash it to make it non-RAID, so slight risk there (although thankfully I have never made any bricks during any sort of flash or ROM upgrades!). Or, there is a FreeNAS-ready card shipped next day from Ohio already flashed and ready to slip in my system for $109.99 + $5.99 shipping, likely to arrive in 4-5 days. I am torn as I am frugal, yet I'm already in for so much now. It is a difference of $45 but then it is now vs December... Your thoughts?!?

Now, the VERY LAST question: While I wait for my LSI 9211-8i card to arrive, should I go ahead and use the LSI MegaRAID that is on the motherboard along with the additional one SATA port it has (right now it is connected to the DVD drive, but since the OS is on the flash drives, it's not needed, so now I could have 5 SATA hard drives connected and thus go ahead and start using my FreeNAS system. But, of course, my plan was for a 6-drive RAIDZ2 configuration. With 5 drives, as I understand it, I can do 4+1 RAIDZ1 or 3+2 RAIDZ2, neither of which is ideal. When the new card arrives will it be easy to add the 6th drive and turn it into the desired RAIDZ2 array with all 6 drives? Would you do this? Should I do this? I do want to go ahead and start using & configuring my system, and I don't want to wait to set it up. The answer to this question sort of helps make the decision above, since if I can go ahead with the hardware I have for now, then I can more easily wait for China to ship me a card...

 

[solarisguy]

Flashing it takes 5 minutes.

That is true, but the phase of the moon has to be right.

I'm talking about IR to IT here.

 

[solarisguy]

VERY LAST answers...

If you get one from Ohio, and there is some warranty attached to it, that should be a win/win scenario.

With 5 SATA disks you can still practice and learn. There are many scenarios you would like to not go through on a system that is "in production".

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Excellent answers. OK. I think that the fellow in Ohio is offering a fair price for the card and it is ready to go and will be here soon. I guess saving $45 seemed awesome, but coming from China in 3-4 weeks (is that a slow boat from China?) is not worth the uncertainty.

Flashing does not particularly scare me, but as you point out, it is IR to IT, which is not likely to be officially supported and might brick it. I admit to being reluctant to putting DD-WRT on my Netgear router. After paying over $200, I would not be a very happy camper with an expensive plastic brick...

OK. I will check back just in case you had something more to add, but likely this will be the last post as an install newbie (funny that having used FreeNAS in the old days [versions before 6 & 7] that I am still a newbie). The advanced features of FreeNAS are excellent, but put me off of using it for awhile because my old hardward just wasn't up to the task. I am very thrilled to be installing a full-fledged SERVER in my home. I have used the term "server" for my flimsy backup solution for awhile, but this will be everything I hope & need: reliable, hot-swappable, fast, the right mix between redundancy and performance, ... I couldn't be more thrilled and very much appreciate the support of the community to welcome me into the fold.

Hats off to SolarisGuy and Fuganater for solid helpful advice.

 

[solarisguy]

[...] IR to IT, which is not likely to be officially supported and might brick it [...]

No, it is not that. Avago (formerly LSI) provides instructions for that, and did not notice any warning. You are loosing warranty by flashing IBM or another third party card with Avago firmware, but that is not the problem.

There is a command sas2flash that manipulates the firmware and BIOS. However, it cannot change between IR and IT modes (in either direction) when executed within an operating system. When executed from FreeNAS (or any other OS) it can only change the firmware revision, but not the mode (IR or IT).

MS-DOS and FreeDOS are not really operating systems :), so SAS2FLSH.EXE can be used to change from IR mode to IT, if... your BIOS has BIOS32 extension. Many do not have it. You almost surely have UEFI BIOS, so instead of DOS you can use UEFI Shell and sas2flash.efi. Does you BIOS offer direct access to UEFI Shell? If it does, then you are in the safe harbour :D If not, then.... (saga continues :D).

[...] Hats off to SolarisGuy and Fuganater for solid helpful advice.

You could always like our posts :D :D

 

[rogerh]

No-one actually answered your question about adding the disk. No, you definitely can't add a disk to a RAIDZ1, 2 or 3 vdev. The only solution is to destroy the pool (having backed up any data you want elsewhere) and recreate it with the new number of disks.

 

[solarisguy]

No-one actually answered your question about adding the disk. No, you definitely can't add a disk to a RAIDZ1, 2 or 3 vdev. The only solution is to destroy the pool (having backed up any data you want elsewhere) and recreate it with the new number of disks.

That is true.

However, and I am not going to say it depends :D, the issue is a complex one.

Some people wrap themselves with a boa constrictor, some pet a scorpion's tail or a black widow. Usually, they know a lot about behaviour of the beast. It is the same here. When someone comfortably knows a lot about ZFS and storage, she or he (not me :D though) plays on the level that scares everybody else, that level should be avoided by everybody else.

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

SolarisGuy, I would say you got sort of philosophical there for awhile. Yes, I have UEFI BIOS in this machine. (I was going to build my server with a used server board but as it maxed out its RAM at the minimum amount of RAM for FreeNAS 9.3 with ZFS I though better of it and gave away the hardware to a deserving young man - 15 years old and enthusiastic). I bought this server, a Lenovo ThinkServer for around $300, which is really a good buy for what you get, then added maximum RAM 32 GB, six 4 TB NAS quality drives, an add-on hard drive cage for up to 4 more drives than the standard 4 hot swap areas, 6 hard drive caddies, 2 Lexar USB drives to have a mirrored 32 GB boot drive, and now I have bought (per your recommendations) an LSI 9211-8i card with Mini-SAS connectors to connect to the backbones on this server. When I am finally done, it will be quite a nice home server.

Since I ordered the card (see above) from Ohio rather than China, I will get it in 3 more days and will get it up & running, so therefore, I am less likely to build the array and then break it down and restart. I did notice, however, that using the built-in SATA to MiniSAS cable to the Lenovo backbone, that all 4 of those drives are noticed and accessible. I used another SATA to MiniSAS cable to attach one SATA port on my motherboard (the one that formerly attached the DVD drive, noted as SATA port 4 vs 0 thru 3 which are the RAID ports) to the secondary Lenovo backbone and it was NOT recognized. Any ideas about that? If it's a standard SATA port capable of attaching a DVD it should have also attached the hard drive located in that cage and attached by the cable, but it was not recognized by the Lenovo BIOS nor FreeNAS. I gave up & just unplugged it again and re-plugged the DVD cable for now and am waiting for my new card to come, but I am curious and a bit worried that there is some other issue. I will say the the Adaptec card, while a total pain in my arse and not at all suitable for a FreeNAS rig, DID recognize all of the drives connected to it, so that makes me feel a bit better. I would think that once the card arrives and is fine, that I may wish to disable the motherboard's SATA controller as it will serve no purpose unless I one day exceed the 8 ports on the LSI card. Would you agree? I have disabled other stuff I am not using, such as the serial port.

 

[solarisguy]

It could be in TS440 BIOS settings. Maybe someone has TS440 experience they would share (I have none).

Just in case, does TS440 BIOS offer an option to enter UEFI Shell ?

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

I did not see it mentioned as such, to enter into UEFI shell. It gave options like UEFI vs Legacy BIOS priority for booting, but I did not see entering the shell as an option.

 

[solarisguy]

While waiting, you should practice :D

Install, re-install. Become comfortable setting up shares, saving configuration, restoring configuration.

Create RAID-Z2 with SATA ports the motherboard has. Make it fail it by powering the system off and taking one disk out, then powering the system up. Learn how to recover from such a situation. (If possible practice both of the following options: putting the original disk back in; putting another disk in its place). How would such a failure show in your e-mails?

Keep documenting for yourself what needs to be done and what is the order of operations.

Check the speed you are getting when copying files over the network.

Random ZFS documentation available on Internet might not describe the recommended practices for your version of FreeNAS 9.3.1, so that is why you have to document what you are doing to make your system work. (The official FreeNAS 9.3.1 documentation is fairly complete in describing the current, 9.3.1, version.)

There are very many pieces of ZFS knowledge that you do not need to learn and still be a successful FreeNAS user. For example, origin of the ZFS name, what COW (copy-on-write) is and why, history of ZFS, default block size, meaning of multitude of parameters FreeNAS sets up by default when creating a ZFS pool / ZFS filesystem, etc.

 

[jgreco]

So, the next to LAST question on this topic: There is a Fujitsu version of the LSI 9211-8i card that fits my bill for $64.99 + $6 to ship from China, but it won't arrive until the first of December (& no option for speedier albeit more expensive shipping). I would likely have to flash it to make it non-RAID, so slight risk there (although thankfully I have never made any bricks during any sort of flash or ROM upgrades!). Or, there is a FreeNAS-ready card shipped next day from Ohio already flashed and ready to slip in my system for $109.99 + $5.99 shipping, likely to arrive in 4-5 days. I am torn as I am frugal, yet I'm already in for so much now. It is a difference of $45 but then it is now vs December... Your thoughts?!?

You really want to learn the ins and outs of flashing some random OEM version of the 9211-8i? Because, I'll tell ya, some of them REALLY SUCK. Like the Dells, where you have to downgrade to P6 or P8 or something like that in order to take them across to IT mode, and the update tools only work in DOS so they won't work on some modern machines... and that's assuming that the cards aren't fake, which is why I encourage people to buy from a reputable US joint. There are lots of companies parts-ing out old servers and usually not a shortage of known-good cards like the M1015.

 

[jgreco]

Flashing it takes 5 minutes.

That's quite a statement. With the Dell cards, we've found it very difficult to do all the update operations on a single machine; even in batch mode I'd bet it takes an average of 20 or 30 minutes to ditch the Dell firmware, cross the card over with the necessary IT firmware, then reset the SAS address, and then upgrade the firmware to what FreeNAS wants. It is a process that takes putting the cards in two different machines, since the flash tool capable of crossing over requires DOS, and the modern flash tool won't work on the same box. Bleh.

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Excellent points. I will indeed practice with what I have for now. It's like when learning to drive, my mom took me to a cemetery where there are roads, but not traffic - no harm, lots of practice making maneuvers. My dad took me when it snowed to a school parking lot to see what it feels like to skid and how to successfully get out of it. You don't want to try that under real dangerous circumstances the first time. There is no substitute for practice and experience. Good thoughts, all.

I doubt it would make any real performance difference, but is there a preferred set-up to use 6 out of te 8 ports on the LSI card? In other words, it's an 8x PCI Express card with 4 channels: should I use 3 ports on one controller side and 3 on the other? 4 & 2? What about 2 on the LSI MegaRAID on the mother board, 2 on the add-on card controller side 1 and 2 on side 2? Would that give each drive their own channel & improve performance? Would I even notice a difference?

 

[Fuganater]

That's quite a statement. With the Dell cards, we've found it very difficult to do all the update operations on a single machine; even in batch mode I'd bet it takes an average of 20 or 30 minutes to ditch the Dell firmware, cross the card over with the necessary IT firmware, then reset the SAS address, and then upgrade the firmware to what FreeNAS wants. It is a process that takes putting the cards in two different machines, since the flash tool capable of crossing over requires DOS, and the modern flash tool won't work on the same box. Bleh.

I'm talking about the 9211-8i

Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Any thoughts at all about my last post? "I doubt it would make any real performance difference, but is there a preferred set-up to use 6 out of the 8 ports on the LSI card? In other words, it's an 8x PCI Express card with 4 channels: should I use 3 ports on one controller side and 3 on the other? 4 & 2? What about 2 on the LSI MegaRAID on the motherboard, 2 on the add-on card controller side 1 and 2 on side 2? Would that give each drive their own channel & improve performance? Would I even notice a difference?"

By the way, I did go ahead and setup a test zpool with the 4 drives that are recognized while I await my LSI card's arrival (should be in just a few more days) and have tweaked settings here and there and am learning a lot. Thanks for all your help previously.

 

[jgreco]

The fastest drives out there transfer data at maybe 220MB/sec. The 9211 is a 4 lane PCIe 2.0 affair which means 4 x 500MB/sec = 2GB/sec. 8 drives at peak capacity easily fits within that, and it is highly unlikely your NAS will be pumping those sorts of data rates to and from the pool anyways, since you're ultimately limited by the gigabit (or ten gigabit) ethernet connectivity the NAS provides. That's the long way of saying "this probably isn't worth worrying about." You can deliberately create a broken setup with congestion of course, but I assume we're not talking about that.