Hi Nicolas,
I just wanted to be sure that you are experiencing the same problem. In
my final setup I wanted to use a Supermicro SuperChassis 826E2-R800LPB
<http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/826/SC826TQ-R800LP.cfm>
with a LSI SAS9207-8i
<http://www.lsi.com/products/host-bus-adapters/pages/lsi-sas-9207-8i.aspx#two>
and a mixture of hard drives.
I included the linux-scsi mailing list for future reference, but I'm
afraid I have bad news. I contacted Supermicro and LSI regarding this
issue and after a lot of back-and-forth and testing on my part this is
what I determined:
* Supermicro Case Number: SM1309158401
* LSI Case Number: P00078977
* Seagate Case Number: 03671535
* The LSI SAS9207-8i
<http://www.lsi.com/products/host-bus-adapters/pages/lsi-sas-9207-8i.aspx#two>
uses the LSI SAS2308 controller, is SAS 2.1 compliant, and has the
same problem
* The Supermicro AOC-USAS2-L8i
<http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS2-L8i.cfm>
uses the LSI SAS2008
<http://www.lsi.com/products/io-controllers/pages/lsi-sas-2008.aspx>
controller, is SAS 2.0 compliant, and has the same problem
* The Supermicro AOC-USAS-L8i
<http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/aoc-usas-l8i.cfm>
uses the LSI SAS1068E
<http://www.lsi.com/products/io-controllers/pages/lsi-sas-1068e.aspx> controller,
is SAS 1.0 compliant, and *works perfectly
*
o Note that this card does not support hard drives with >2TB of space
o All drives work (including the ones affected on the newer
controller), but they have exactly 2^32 bytes of usable space
* Supermicro SuperChassis 826E2-R800LPB
<http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/826/SC826TQ-R800LP.cfm>
uses the BPN-SAS-826EL2 backplane (SAS 1.0)
* The BPN-SAS-826EL2 uses the LSI SASx28
<http://www.lsi.com/products/sas-expanders/pages/lsi-sas-x28.aspx>
expander chipset (SAS 1.0)
* LSI has discontinued support for the LSI SASx28
<http://www.lsi.com/products/sas-expanders/pages/lsi-sas-x28.aspx>
over 2 years ago!
* Supermicro refused to provide support or a new firmware for the
backplane or LSI SASx28 expander. They told me to contact Supermicro
for a new backplane firmware or a new backplane.
* I forwarded my entire e-mail chain from LSI to Supermicro and
Supermicro said that LSI discontinued support over 2 years ago and
that there is no newer firmware.
* *To solve the issue, You need to replace the SAS1 backplane
(BPN-SAS-826EL2)**with a SAS2 packplane: **BPN-SAS2-826EL2*
o I did not try this -- I can't guarantee that it will work
I believe it is a problem with the SAS1 backplane and SAS2 controller
card. Why only certain drives are affected, I'm not sure. My guess is
it's a power-saving feature that is causing them to not spin up
properly, then the controller/backplane disables the drive bay
permanently for some reason. It is something related to mixing the SAS2
controller with the SAS1 backplane. A SAS2 backplane might fix the issue.
I am still using the Supermicro SuperChassis 826E2-R800LPB with the
BPN-SAS-826EL2 backplane with the LSI SASx28 expander chipset, all with
a LSI SAS9207-8i controller. In my particular situation we decided to
just go with drives that work from the compatibility list -- which is
very expensive, but I needed the guarantee that they would work.
With that configuration, I did some testing with various drives and this
is what I found:
* Western Digital WD2003FYYS-02W0B0 *works*
* Western Digital WD20EARS-00S8B1*works*
* Western Digital WD3000BLFS-01YBU4 *works*
* Western Digital WD3000HLFS-01G6U1 *works*
* Western Digital WD30EFRX-68AX9N0 *works *(but had some odd "task
abort" kernel messages)
* Western Digital WD740ADFD-00NLR5 *works*
* Seagate ST3000DM001 /*failed*/
* Seagate ST3500641AS *works*
* Seagate ST4000DM000-1F2168 /*failed*/
* Seagate ST91000640NS *works*
I also tried these drives on my HighPoint RocketRaid 2740 (direct
attached SAS 2.0) without the backplane and all the drives worked perfectly.
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