Storage Server: Firmware

Firmware

The first thing to do, in order to get any software RAID program to run, is to flash the controller out of RAID mode. Only then all of the disks will be seen as just a bunch of disks - nothing else. JBOD that is, for short.

The board I have, comes with a LSI SAS2308 controller, to with I want to connect 12 SATA drives using three SAS-to-SATA breakout cables.

Drivers

There are two locations you can get the drivers for those LSI2308 controllers: the SuperMicro site, which at the time of writing offers the P20 version, and the ASRock Rack site, that describes quite nicely how to flash to P16, in order to support freeNAS.

My current verion is P19, RAID mode:

LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility Version 17.00.00.00 (2013.07.19) Copyright (c) 2008-2013 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2308_1(D1) Controller Number : 0 Controller : SAS2308_1(D1) PCI Address : 00:02:00:00 SAS Address : 5d05099-0-0000-5198 NVDATA Version (Default) : 11.00.00.01 NVDATA Version (Persistent) : 11.00.00.01 Firmware Product ID : 0x2714 (IR) Firmware Version : 19.00.00.00 NVDATA Vendor : LSI NVDATA Product ID : Undefined BIOS Version : 07.37.00.00 UEFI BSD Version : N/A FCODE Version : N/A Board Name : ASRSAS2308 Board Assembly : N/A Board Tracer Number : N/A

Note the "(IR)" in the Firmware Product ID section; I want that to read "(IT)". And, as freeNAS now supports P20, I'll go for the P20 version, off the SuperMicro site.

Flashing

Download, unzip and copy the DOS subdirectory contents to a bootable USB stick. I use Rufus and a freedos image for that purpose. Boot from it, and start the flashing:

Never mind the typo :)
After a while, you will see this:

You can find the address as "SAS Address" listed above (which output of the ASRock utility), or you can find it on the controller configuration pages (make sure the controller is marked as bootable, and press CTRL-C)

On this screen copy, you can see the new firmware version, 20, and mode: IT. Which is what I wanted. You can also see the address, by the way, formatted a bit differently. The last nine digit are displayed as '0:00005198'; SuperMicro seems to use a prefix of '5003048', the original ASRock being '5D0599'. We'll find out if it makes a difference in the next sequence: Storage Server: Software - FreeNas!