Will a Dell R530 with a PERC HBA330 work with ZFS?

[dpearcefl]

Will this combo allow ZFS to talk to the drives directly? Thanks.

Dave

 

[dlavigne]

Did you find the answer to your question?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Based on some quick Googling, it looks like that although the PERC H330 is a rebadged LSI 9300-8i using the SAS3008 chipset, no one has confirmed the ability to reflash the LSI IT mode firmware onto it yet and the stock Dell firmware does not do proper IT mode.

So the immediate answer here is "no" with a more optimistic one being "not yet."

Edit, Three Years Later: Optimism has paid off; you can now reflash the H330 into an HBA330 - once this is done, it's a perfectly fine HBA for ZFS!

Flash/Crossflash DELL H330 RAID Card to HBA330/12Gbps HBA IT Firmware

Success! You can now flash the Dell PERC H330 (All Models) to IT Mode (HBA330). Big Thanks to BLinux for asking if it could be done! (Inspiration!) So I initially had a super long write-up, but that's way too long, you just need the compact steps. I linked the write up at the end of the...

forums.servethehome.com

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, the SAS3 stuff (as well as newer SAS2 stuff) can use a new software stack that allows it to provide direct-attach disks to the OS with no RAID, even in RAID mode.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Well, the SAS3 stuff (as well as newer SAS2 stuff) can use a new software stack that allows it to provide direct-attach disks to the OS with no RAID, even in RAID mode.

Assuming you mean the mfi driver allowing direct SCSI access to the underlying device via /dev/passN here, right? I thought that was intended only for things like pulling SMART data and controlling things like tape drives to handle eject/load behavior, not as a primary data path.

 

[Ericloewe]

Assuming you mean the mfi driver allowing direct SCSI access to the underlying device via /dev/passN here, right?

Nope, it's not mfi. There's a new driver that handles everyone's use cases even for controllers in RAID mode. The name eludes me at the moment, but people have had success using it.

Drives are presented as daX devices, which is a very good sign.

Of course, IT mode is a known quantity and is thus preferred.

 

[pbryan]

Sorry to necro this thread, but I kept stumbling upon it when Googling for the same answer. To help others, here's how I fixed my issue. I have a PERC H330 Mini. The driver you need is mrsas. By default FreeNAS loads the mfi driver (no SMART, no hot-swap, drives show as "mfisysXXX") and you have to force the mrsas driver (drives show as "daX").

You have to edit 2 files...

Code:

... add the following lines to "/boot/loader.conf"
mrsas_load="YES"
kern.geom.label.gptid.enable="0"
kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable="0"

... add the following line to "/boot/devices.hints"
hw.mfi.mrsas_enable="1"

Thanks, guys. I apologize if this isn't kosher; I just didn't want another "nvm fixed it" thread.

 

[SweetAndLow]

You should also take into account that after an upgrade those files will be overwritten and who knows what will happen to your pool. Good luck and try not to modify your base install.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[dlavigne]

Please create a feature request at bugs.freenas.org requesting that FreeNAS automatically load the correct driver for this hardware. Post the issue number here.

 

[pbryan]

Thank you guys for the advice. I just posted bug: https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/23415

 

[Almstsobur]

The H330 is passthrough, but the HBA 330 is a direct HBA controller and will have no problem with ZFS

 

[ovizii]

Just wanted to add that I am looking at a Dell R530 with a PERC H330 as opposed to HBA330 and I found this thread where they mention:

The Dell PERC H330 (LSI SAS3008 chipset) that came in our new R230 servers is 12Gb SAS x 8 channels (two 4-lane mini-SAS connectors) and not-only supports pass-through of non-RAID disks by default, but also has an IT mode option in the firmware.

=> https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewt...id=451d51ab62b829e5efd90130854d593a#p30659981

I'll confirm once I get my server setup.

 

[pbryan]

Just adding some additional detail: @SweetAndLow is exactly right, updating FreeNAS will overwrite the loader.conf and devices.hints files thus removing this fix. For that reason, I wouldn't recommend doing that fix on any system with critical data unless you understand that you may loose your pool if you update.

 

[guglez]

Just wanted to add that I am looking at a Dell R530 with a PERC H330 as opposed to HBA330 and I found this thread where they mention:
=> https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewt...id=451d51ab62b829e5efd90130854d593a#p30659981

I'll confirm once I get my server setup.

Is it working fine?

 

[ovizii]

Is it working fine?

Sorry but I have to disappoint you, I got that server but unfortunately the scenario changed and I had to go wit ha VMWare installation so I never got around to test :-(

 

[pbryan]

Is it working fine?

I'll respond as I have the same setup (R530 + PERC H330). Yes; as of 9.10.2 U6, it all works perfectly. You are able to enable pass-through on the H330 and the drives show correctly in FreeNAS.

 

[M H]

Just to follow up. Yes the Hba330 in a R530 works fantastic with ZFS. The Hba330 even comes already flashed with the IT firmware. It's natively supported with no need to enable the mrsas driver. This is as of 9.10 U6

 

[BlackMoonWolf]

Just to follow up. Yes the Hba330 in a R530 works fantastic with ZFS. The Hba330 even comes already flashed with the IT firmware. It's natively supported with no need to enable the mrsas driver. This is as of 9.10 U6

Can you show us the output of

Code:

dmesg | grep transfers

to verify that the drives are operating at the appropriate speeds?

 

[BlackMoonWolf]

Context:

I have purchased a Dell PERC H330 (P/N: 04Y5H1) thinking that I could flash it to IT. I have it installed in an R710. A friend of mine also has an R710 with another SAS3008-based card. Despite the fact that it's a server with a backplane that is ostensibly limited to 6Gb/s, he is showing 12Gb/s connectivity. (1200Mb/s according to dmesg.)

It doesn't make sense but it's working. (I don't want to get into the debate about backplanes here.)

I've been trying to figure out what firmware I can flash this card with... For now, I can't even use MegaCLI to access the card. The card's BIOS menu shows either RAID mode or HBA mode. I am currently using the latter and can see the drives as "daX" devices in FreeNAS.

But THIS is the problem:

da0: 150.000MB/s transfers da1: 150.000MB/s transfers da2: 150.000MB/s transfers da3: 150.000MB/s transfers da4: 150.000MB/s transfers da5: 150.000MB/s transfers

That's TERRIBLE. Makes zero sense as to why it would scale down 12Gb/s drives to almost NOTHING in speed. At the minimum, it shouldn't be running anything lower than 600MB/s...

I've been searching for the information but either it doesn't exist or I'm just NOT finding it. All I have been able to do thus far is download the firmware shown for the 9300-8i from Broadcom but if the sas3flash tool doesn't see the adapter (it doesn't) then that won't do me any good.

I'm about fed up with this, honestly. I'm thinking about destroying this adapter with a hammer then putting my old HBA in. It works at the correct speeds...

 

[Sleyk]

I just registered here today to let you guys know that I figured it out.

You can now flash over a Dell H330 Raid Card to HBA IT Firmware. Essentially, a 12Gbps HBA card!

See Here: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...30-raid-card-to-12gbps-hba-it-firmware.25498/

Please read everything carefully, and happy flashing!