ilmarmors
Dabbler
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2014
- Messages
- 25
I have two 1U Supermicro SuperStorage Servers 5018A-AR12L with 12 disks. They have Supermicro A1SA7-2750F motherboard, which has LSI 2116 SW controller for 16x ports. The same controller is used for LSI 9201-16i HBA card. Servers are fully pre-built, one with 12 x 4TB Constellation ES.3 ST4000NM0033, second with 12 x 5TB Enterprise Capacity ST5000NM0024 disks.
I installed latest stable FreeNAS 9.3 on those servers, but FreeNAS alerts that there is mismatch between version of LSI driver in FreeNAS (P16) and firmware on LSI 2116 controller on motherboard (P19)
Although in theory P19 version shouldn't introduce any incompatibilities to FreeBSD LSI driver for version P16, but I read in forums that it is suggested to use identical version for firmware and driver ports. So LSI controller firmware should be downgraded to P16 in IT mode. And here comes problem:
I found P16 firmware on LSI site
http://www.lsi.com/support/pages/do...0027&assettype=0&productname=LSI+SAS+9201-16i
But it is not possible to get P16 firmware from Supermicro:
My question, given Supermicro doesn't have P16 firmware and can't recommend Firmware from LSI site - what would be most sensible way to proceed:
I installed latest stable FreeNAS 9.3 on those servers, but FreeNAS alerts that there is mismatch between version of LSI driver in FreeNAS (P16) and firmware on LSI 2116 controller on motherboard (P19)
Although in theory P19 version shouldn't introduce any incompatibilities to FreeBSD LSI driver for version P16, but I read in forums that it is suggested to use identical version for firmware and driver ports. So LSI controller firmware should be downgraded to P16 in IT mode. And here comes problem:
I found P16 firmware on LSI site
http://www.lsi.com/support/pages/do...0027&assettype=0&productname=LSI+SAS+9201-16i
But it is not possible to get P16 firmware from Supermicro:
The oldest FW that we [Supermicro] could offer for this board is PH18. We don't have any older FW as we didn't use the chip before. FreeBSD/FreeNAS 9.3 are both not validated OS's. We have validated FreeBSD 10.0 on the board.
The [validation] test isn't more than an installation and a quick check whether everything works. The test was likely done with an SSD connected to the standard SATA port.
I can't recommend using the LSI FW as we have seen this go wrong on occasion, but technically it should work.
My question, given Supermicro doesn't have P16 firmware and can't recommend Firmware from LSI site - what would be most sensible way to proceed:
- Install P16 Firmware from LSI site - controller is the same, but it is for HBA card. Not sure also whether Supermicro has some customizations for their firmware.
- Leave P19 Firmware as it is now. BTW, will FreeNAS 10 have P19 or P20 driver version?
- Something else