ServeRAID M5210e passthroughand syspd corruption

[Borja Marcos]

On Feb 28, 2014, at 11:45 AM, Steven Hartland wrote:

>> I know, unfortunately this brain dead (unless proven otherwise) IBM
>> machine doesn't seem to allow me to use a proper HBA.
> 
> Not PCI slots at all then?

No, it was purchased in a funny configuration. Well, would be great if it worked. The
PCIe raiser card which would offer three slots is replaced by a contraption with two disks
and a LSI HBA (that's one of the "mps" ones but just with one connector).

The front of the  machine has 24 slots for 2.5" disks. IBM makes them so that you can use
the two "back" disks for the OS, with a simple mirroring support, and all of the front mounted
disks for storage. 

The concept is nice, *but* if only the "Invader" (that's indeed a proper name!) could
behave like a good HBA...

> 
>> That said, since I asked for assistance in 2007 and Scott Long explained
>> how to turn an aac card into a passthrough device I have machines running
>> like a charm. I am sure I can trust ZFS to detect any problems due to that
>> setup.
> 
> Some older LSI controllers (both these are LSI underneath) had both a RAID
> and HBA firmware however new cards don't have this option.

I've done it with aac cards with the same results. Seems the bad apple is this "Invader" thingy.


>> When you said you're seeing mfisyspd corruption what specifically are
>> you seeing?
> 
>> I described some of the problems several days ago, in short, either using
>> ZFS or UFS on one of those "mfisyspd" devices or a "da" created by allowing
>> passthrough to work and running a benchmark, I get data corruption. No data
>> corruption happens if I create a "raid 0" device on one disk. 
> 
> Specifics on this would be interesting, as there used be corruption issues
> with > 2TB disks on MFI but we fixed that quite some time ago.

All of the disks are smaller than 2 TB.

The exact models involved are:

Samsung SSD 840 BB0Q (1 TB)
OCZ-VERTEX4 1.5 (500 MB)

and for the hard disk, a Dell branded Seagate (ST9146803SS)


>> I've tried with Samsung and OCZ SSDs and, just wondering if it might be a
>> SSD specific problem of some sort, a Seagate disk. No luck.
> 
> We have a few machines in production here using MFI in passthrough via
> mfisyspd0 on ZFS and haven't seen any issues. In our case its a ThunderBolt
> not a Invader generation card so if could be there's a problem with
> Invader chipset support.

The problem with mfisyspd (anyway, the Invader is corrupting using da and mfisyspd) is that, as far
as I know, it won't support TRIM nor quircks (such as 4K blocks) for SSDs.

Anyway, as I said, neither the syspd nor the "brute force" approach are working)


>> With so many manufacturers (even Sun!) tending including these controllers
>> on their motherboards, and even refusing to sell alternative options (who
>> wants a "software RAID" when you can get "a hardware one", they say) I
>> think that it would be good to make sure that passthrough mode is supported
>> in the best possible way.
> 
> We just ensure we go with HBA card if required.

Yes, I think the  solution will be to kick "turnkey, Windows oriented" manufacturers such as Dell and
IBM and specify the servers to the component level. Again, from my experience, it can be quite a pain. 

>> Maybe we could lobby the LSI Overlords, the manufacturers, both, or just
>> try to make the best possible use of the most commonly found hardware.
> 
> 
> Can't say we've had an issue, Dell, Supermicro all have options for HBA
> you just need to know the model numbers, which can be quite confusing.

Of course. We've had some problems with Dell, though. I remember telling a Dell
sales rep to just shut up and serve the card I have ordered, period. Sigh.


> One chassis to avoid is the Dell C6220 series as it fails on 6Gbps speeds
> due to bad wiring.

Thanks, useful information!!






Borja.