MegaRAID: what does “Is VD emulated: No” mean

We managed to finally fix this issue. The ultimate cause and fix? It seems a manufacturing process error caused some JBODs shipped from Supermicro to come with a default burned in logical ID (the 0000007F). This address is actually supposed to match the SAS address by default.

To fix this issue, we had to run a tool called ExpanderXtools Lite (ftp://supermicro.com/utility/ExpanderXtools_Lite/). You run the SMC binary and will get a X window popup (you'll either need X installed, or if you are not running X on your servers like us, a local X server on your laptop being forwarded through SSH). In the SMC program you select the COM menu and click on inband.

Now, you can go to the WWN menu and select WWN. A new popup will show your JBOD primary and secondary (if you have the E26 model) controllers. You need to update both controllers at the same time before closing the window. After updated and the window is closed, power off the array for a bit and power back on. Use the SMC binary again to verify the logical address shows correctly.

The biggest pain point of this was having to power down the arrays. It might be possible to do this online and do a rescan with your RAID card. But better to play it safe. Port IDs for disks will change. For us, our LSI card was able to pick up the arrays after the change. Your mileage may vary.

I think the table is wrong.

Because RAID 10 is a stripe (RAID-0) of a Mirror (RAID-1)
Primary -> RAID-1
Secondary -> RAID-0

RAID 0 -> RAID 1 -> DISK
                 -> DISK
       -> RAID 1 -> DISK
                 -> DISK