No drives showing on LSI 2008 SAS + HP SAS Expander

lsiraidsasstorage

Followin this guide http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x8si6-f-motherboard-review-including-onboard-lsi-sas-2008-controller/ I got myself an RPC 4224 case (They are called Inter-Tech in Europe, but are the same) and an Supermicro X8SI6-F with the onboard LSI SAS 2008 Controller along with an HP SAS expander card.

After assembling everything I am able to access the Motherboards BIOS and the controllers BIOS.

However I do not see any of my 24 3-TB Seagate drives showing in either my OS (Ubuntu server 12.10), the Motherboard BIOS or the RAID Controller BIOS.

Also I cannot find any functionality in the Controller BIOS where I can put it on JBOD.

The hardware should be compatible, I found various posts about this contorller and the HP SAS Expander card.

I would like to have the drives accessible as JBOD in my OS. (No hardware raid of any kind…)

Could someone point me in the right direction for troubleshooting? Any help is appriciated!

I mounted the HP SAS expander card on the x8 slot and not the x16 slot.

It is as showed on the pictures of the blogpost posted above.

Supermicro webpage says that its only a x4 slot using an x8 slot. Could that be a problem? Maby it doesnt deliver enough power to the card?

I connected the expander card using two sff 8087 cables on the ports to controller as stated by the manual.

Also the HP SAS expander is recognised and displayed as type "enclosure" in the SAS Controller firmware…

I really dont know what to do 🙁

Best Answer

I flashed an alternative onto the controller, this required the complete erasement of the old. This can only be done with the undocumented command sas2flsh -o -e 7.

Also only with the ms dos version of the flash utitily found on the vendors webpage.

After that the alternative "LT" firmware can be installed. Due to the complete eradication of the old firmware, including the SAS address, you have to manually re program it.

I found it on the mainboard, but I think any number would have worked as far as unique.

This can also be only done sith the dos utility and the -sasadd command.

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