# Dell R510 with LSI 9211-8i Problems with FreeBSD 9.0



## zfslover (Mar 22, 2012)

Not sure anyone has seen this or if it is a known issue, but it is driving me crazy!

Working config: Original hardware Dell R510, H700 RAID controller, 12x2TB SAS Toshiba HDD (hot swap), 2xInternal Fuji HDD (non hot swap).  I set up all the 2TB HDD's as RAID 0 and everything works fine with F*ree*BSD 9.0, FreeNAS 8.x, OpenIndiana 151a, etc. 

Device ID's are 0 - 11 for hot-swap, and 12,13 for 2.5" internal hdd's.

Non working config: I replaced the H700 card with an LSI 9211-8i flashed with latest v12 IT firmware, connected both SAS ports to the controller.  LSI Bios sees all 14 devices just fine.  Initial boot loader for F*ree*BSD and FreeNAS sees all 14 devices, however when you get to the installer section, it only sees 8 HDD's, 6 of the hot swap, and the 2 internal.

I replaced the 9211-8i with 2x9211-4i, and I plugged one SAS port into each controller.  Each controller sees all HDD's, which is odd!

I replaced the 9211 series cards with aoc-sas2lp-mv8 card, and it acts the same as the 8i card.

Now the kicker, I installed RHEL 5.8 and 6.2 just fine with the 9211-8i card for testing, it saw all the ports, created software RAID, and installed the OS without issue.

Am I running into an expander issue on the Dell R510 that isn't compatible with *Free*BSD?  Three days of chasing this, and I haven't gotten any further to resolving the issue, frustrating.  Any ideas on how to chase this one down?

Thanks!


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## zfslover (Mar 26, 2012)

An update to this.  Flashed the LSI cards with the RC13 bios, and now Solaris 11 works just fine, however FreeBSD, FreeNAS still don't work.

Was hoping to get FreeBSD 9 working, but it looks like I am stuck with using and paying for Solaris from Oracle (ugh).

Can a mod move this to the new Storage section too?

Thanks!


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