LSI 9240-4i 4K alignment

[Don Lewis]

On 19 Aug, Josh Paetzel wrote:
> On 08/19/2012 14:04, Steven Hartland wrote:

>> HBA's are the way to go if your using ZFS to manage the disks, you only
>> need RAID if your using a FS which doesn't manage the disk side well
>> such as UFS.
>> 
>> Its often quite common for RAID controllers to actually be slower
>> vs RAID controllers as the RAID stack can get in the way.

Any idea of what kind of performance penalty I might see by using the
RAID firmware in JBOD mode vs flashing the IT firmware?

> Just to clear up,
> 
> The 9240 is a sas2008 based card with the megaraid software on top of
> it.  In it's default config from LSI the FreeBSD mfi will recognize it
> in later versions of FreeBSD (The upcoming 9.1  for sure)  Older
> versions of mfi will not recognize it.
> 
> The card can be flashed with IT firmware and then becomes a 9211 HBA,
> but it's a bit more expensive than a 9211 is so that doesn't make sense
> to do in many cases.

The price difference was pretty minor when I looked.  Confusingly
enough, the 9211 HBA also has some RAID capabilities.

For me, the biggest advantage of the 9211 would be that it would have
allowed me to use shorter cables.

> On the dmesg posted the firmware on the card is phase 11.  This *must*
> be in lockstep with the driver version or the card may not play nicely.
>  FreeBSD 8.3 and 9.0 have v13 of the driver, the upcoming 9.1 will have
> v14.  Note that v14 fixes a *ton* of stability bugs, including issues
> where bad drives would hang the controller or prevent systems from booting.

Where do those version numbers come from?  The mfi driver in 9.0-RELEASE
claims to be version 3.00 and the the driver in 9.1 claims to be version
4.23.

This is what shows up in dmesg on my machine:

mfi0: <Drake Skinny> port 0xce00-0xceff mem 0xfcefc000-0xfcefffff,0xfce80000-0xf
cebffff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci1
mfi0: Using MSI
mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 4.23
mfi0: 333 (398082533s/0x0020/info) - Shutdown command received from host
mfi0: 334 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0073
/1000/9240/1000)
mfi0: 335 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 2.70.04-0862
mfi0: 336 (boot + 5s/0x0020/info) - Board Revision 04A
mfi0: 337 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0073
/1000/9240/1000)
mfi0: 338 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 2.70.04-0862
mfi0: 339 (boot + 5s/0x0020/info) - Board Revision 04A
mfi0: 340 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0073
/1000/9240/1000)
mfi0: 341 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 2.70.04-0862
mfi0: 342 (boot + 5s/0x0020/info) - Board Revision 04A
mfi0: 343 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0073
/1000/9240/1000)
mfi0: 344 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 2.70.04-0862
mfi0: 345 (boot + 5s/0x0020/info) - Board Revision 04A
mfi0: 346 (398759025s/0x0020/info) - Time established as 08/20/12  6:23:45; (25
seconds since power on)
mfi0: 347 (398759051s/0x0020/info) - Time established as 08/20/12  6:24:11; (51
seconds since power on)
mfi0: 348 (398759078s/0x0020/WARN) - Patrol Read can't be started, as PDs are ei
ther not ONLINE, or are in a VD with an active process, or are in an excluded VD


% mfiutil show firmware
mfi0 Firmware Package Version: 20.5.1-0003
mfi0 Firmware Images:
Name  Version            Date         Time      Status
BIOS  4.14.00                                   active
PCLI  03.02-001:#%00008  Feb 09 2010  13:09:06  active
BCON  4.0-22-e_10-Rel    Mar 11 2010  12:38:08  active
NVDT  3.04.03-0002       Apr 05 2010  18:50:27  active
APP   2.70.04-0862       May 05 2010  18:12:07  active
BTBL  2.01.00.00-0019    May 14 2009  15:52:08  active


The only firmware file on LSI's web site for the 9240-8i is version
20.10.1-107, which appears to be newer than what is on the card if the
20.5.1-0003 is the version number that I should be looking at.  Is the
BIOS Version 4.14 the v14 version that you mention above?

If the FreeBSD mfi driver expects a certain firmware version, shouldn't
it complain if it doesn't find it?