x3400 (7975) pcie slots questions? m5015

[Ulises]

Hi guys,

Been using FreeNAS for a fews years now, and have recently found a very cheap well setup IBM x3400 (7975), so im still trying to figure the pci slot i need for an M5015 which i want to make sure fits before i buy online.

Basically the x3400 has 3x PCIe x8 and the m5015 has PCIe 2.0 x8 (compatible?)

I am looking at the m5015 because they are cheaper than the m1015 and i think the m1015 doesnt do 4tb hdd, am i correct?

Hopefully i didnt miss anything.
And thanks guys for your help.


By the way, different subject, i can "usb stick" boot DOS but freenas dosnt boot, so had to install freenas on a hdd. Any reason freenas wouldnt boot from the usb stick?

 

[BigDave]

I am looking at the m5015 because they are cheaper than the m1015 and i think the m1015 doesnt do 4tb hdd, am i correct?

I've not heard mention of the M1015 not working with larger drives and either card will work in that board,
the slots being X8 won't matter as you can run X4 or X8 card in a X16 slot or X1, X4 cards in an X8 slot.

Any reason freenas wouldnt boot from the usb stick?

None that I know of. I would not waste the power to run a boot drive on a hard disk.
I run my server from an Intel X25E 32GB SSD, they can be purchased off ebay for under $40 used and they
last forever because they are enterprize grade SLC flash chips. I don't like flash drives for FreeNAS since the OS drive is now ZFS.

 

[cyberjock]

There is no drive size limit for the M1015.

 

[Ulises]

Thanks for clarifying there is no size limit, but still i cant get a hold of a m1015, but i can get m5015 which should still work fine?

 

[jgreco]

No, the 5015 is a RAID controller. See the LSI sticky.

 

[Ulises]

Ok so i found and bought a local m1015, hopefully it arrives real soon

So basically i will just connect the card to the backplane hotswap boards, question, will hot swap features still work?

 

[jgreco]

Hotswap should work. The M1015 is a competent HBA.

You should, however, crossflash the M1015 to IT mode firmware or you actually haven't accomplished all that much; by default, the M1015 firmware is also driven via mfi so you're just trading crap for crap. The difference is that the M1015 can be crossflashed to IT mode, where the IT firmware ditches the pathetic entry-level RAID and just acts as a host initiator.

 

[Ulises]

I have the firmware downloaded and ready to go