Z820 - Flash onboard LSI 2308 controller to IT-Mode

[Jayal]

Hi all, firmware for the onboard LSI 2308 controller is available as (default) IR mode (Raid mode) thru the downloads section.

I need to flash the Z820 onboard LSI 2308 controller to IT-Mode (instead of the default IR-Mode).

I cannot find the IT-Mode firmware (only the IR-Mode firmware updater), can someone help me with sending me that firmware file?

Thank you for your help,

Sincerely Joakim

[RowanCloete]

Hi there!

I was able to successfully flash the controller to IT mode using the firmware available from the supermicro site.

Here is a pretty good article on it as well as a link to the firmware:

http://www.vbrain.info/2015/02/11/homelab-part-5-upgrade-lsi2308-firmware/

I am still trying to figure out why one would go for the IT over the IR firmware?

Could you post a link to the HP LSI 2308 controller (default) IR mode (Raid mode) firmware in the downloads section?

I can't seem to find it!

[Jayal]

Hi There, really appreciate your confirmation! You did flash the Z820 LSI 2308 controller correct (and not Supermicro 🙂 ?

Reason for using IT Mode firmware would be to let the OS (when using Solaris or OmniOS etc) to have direct access to the controller since ZFS filesystem handle the raid better then.

There are though performance (in high performance setup) issues reported with using the built in LSI controller instead of using an external HP branded (LSI bundled) controller.

Recommended approach for better performance is to use an external dedicated HP Raid card instead (such as any of the bundled LSI versions available for purchase from HP).

For the IR Firmware for LSI 2308

Please see:

Firmware (29)

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/readIndex?sp4ts.oid=5225042&swLangOid=8&swEnvOid=4060

LSI SAS 2308 Firmware Update for Z820 (Eastern European, International)

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?sp4ts.oid=5225042&swItemId=wk_136295_1&swEnvOid=406...

LSI firmwar upgrade Utility:

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?swItemId=wk_136295_1&swEnvOid=4061

Once again, thank you so much for your feedback!!!

// J

[Jayal]

Hi again.

I used the DOS version and tried to flash the image to P19 (downloaded from SuperMicro).

I got the error message:

NVDATA Device ID and Chip Revision match verified.

ERROR: NVDATA Image does not match Controller SubSystem ID!

Seems the UEFI version of sas2flash is more forgiving?

"

In any case, the UEFI version of sas2flash tends to be more successful with operations more complicated than simple upgrades.

"

Did you use UEFI or DOS?

(I managed to flash back to HP IR version).

// J

[RowanCloete]

Hey there.

I used the DOS version to flash the LSI controller on the HP (not the supermicro 🙂

I used the very latest version plus installer from the  PH20.00.07.00-IT.zip file.

Here are the instructions, which I followed for DOS

Flashing IT mode in DOS:

1) Please copy all files from DOS folder to bootable USB disk

##(here I booted into DOS from the USB and first ran sas2flash.exe at the prompt before running SMC2308T.bat)##

2) Run SMC2308T.bat and following the instruction to enter the last 9 digits/character of the SAS address. 

#check carefully that you're using the last 9 digits - there are 16 in total#

3) If you are having problem to enter the SAS address, please use the command below to set the controller SAS address.

      sas2flsh.exe -o –sasadd “Controller SAS address”

      For example: sas2flsh.exe -o –sasadd 50030480070a8b00

4) Reboot the system

Flashing IT mode in UEFI shell: For all X9 MB

1) Please copy all files from UEFI folder to bootable USB disk

2) Run SMC2308T.nsh and following the instruction to enter the last 9 digits/character of the SAS address.

3) If you are having problem to enter the SAS address, please use the command below to set the controller SAS address.

      sas2flash.efi -o –sasadd “Controller SAS address”

      For example: sas2flash.efi -o –sasadd 50030480070a8b00

4) Reboot the system

Running Windows 10 RAID 0 softraid now on 4 x 3GB WD RED NAS SATA drives, and though my read speeds are at previous IR levels my write speeds aren't as good as before - I will continue to monitor and stress test.

I updated the firmware (was previous P12) as my RAID started to seriously bug out after about 3 months of setting it up - I'm talking 6MB/s instead of 500MB/s, and the release notes for this latest driver cites fixing a slow SATA performance bug.

Thanks for the info on why IT!

[Jayal]

Appreciate your answer and response!

Another question would also be why using an external controller instead of built in.

An external (Hp/LSI) controller usually have built in caching and thus gives you better write speeds.

Using Solaris ZFS then you have built in caching (read/write) into the ZFS filesystem and this also takes care of write memory hole and other enterprise storage features 🙂

But this is more intended for storage systems 🙂

May I ask you what version of the firmware you upgraded from? (And to what firmware (I assume PH20.00.07.00-IT)

There may be some software "blocks" for upgrading later versions and thus my error.

// J

[RowanCloete]

Great - I figured as much regarding the file system being able to cache for the controller - good to know!

I upgraded from version 12 (dated 2011 as I can gather from POST info) to latest, being PH20.00.07.00-IT. 

My earlier slow write speeds have now resolved itself and windows RAID is now giving me the same speeds as I had when the IR firmware was running well. So I'm pretty happy with the result as I am not looking to boot off this controller anytime soon - the intel RAID controller does a good job with the two SSD's I have in RAID 0 for the OS.