# LSI SAS HBAs with IT firmware



## AndyUKG (Nov 8, 2012)

Hi,

  can anyone point me in the direction of such a card that has IT firmware available? I'm looking for a solid HBA with 8 or 16 internal connections (to use with ZFS). I'm just looking through their current cards and none of the 8i cards have an IT firmware listed in the download section.

Thanks for any ideas! Andy.


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## gkontos (Nov 8, 2012)

LSI SAS 9211-8i currently has an IT firmware for download from their website.  (Sept 18 2012)

Link: http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/LSISAS9211-8i.aspx

If you are looking for a different model please PM and I can look. 

PS I don't work for LSI, I just use their products a lot


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## AndyUKG (Nov 8, 2012)

Thanks Gkontos  That should suit me if I its still available, its not listed here:

http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/6GBSATA_SASRAIDCards.aspx

Unless Im looking in the wrong place seems like its an old model. Ill check with my reseller and see if they can supply me with any,

cheers! Andy.

PS you don't really have to use MSDOS to install the firmware do you? Do you use MegaCLI?


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## Sebulon (Nov 9, 2012)

CanÂ´t speak for everyone else, but thatÂ´s how I do it:O

I have a bootable USB-drive with DOS that I can throw over firmware on, reboot the machines and update from there.

But if you were updating from within the system, donÂ´t you think the OS would be very...displeased if the controller reboots after updating?

/Sebulon


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## Sfynx (Nov 9, 2012)

Yeah, the LSI SAS 9211-8i is a great chipset for use with FreeBSD, apparently LSI has issued an improved mps(4) driver version as well which is also in FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE. Not sure how well it supports controller-based RAID now, but for a JBOD / ZFS setup it works great. Hopefully userland support like mptutil(8) will come for it soon though to allow for easy drive and controller management within the OS.


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## phoenix (Nov 9, 2012)

AndyUKG said:
			
		

> Thanks Gkontos  That should suit me if I its still available, its not listed here:
> 
> http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/6GBSATA_SASRAIDCards.aspx
> 
> Unless Im looking in the wrong place seems like its an old model. Ill check with my reseller and see if they can supply me with any,



The 9211 is *NOT* a RAID controller, it's a plane-jane SAS/SATA controller. Thus, you are looking in the wrong spot.    Look under the HBA section of their website.

The 9211 comes with iT firmware by default.  And it's very easy to flash different versions of the iT firmware.  There's even a FreeBSD-native executable to do so.


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## phoenix (Nov 9, 2012)

Sebulon said:
			
		

> CanÂ´t speak for everyone else, but thatÂ´s how I do it:O
> 
> I have a bootable USB-drive with DOS that I can throw over firmware on, reboot the machines and update from there.
> 
> But if you were updating from within the system, donÂ´t you think the OS would be very...displeased if the controller reboots after updating?



If you have / (root fs) mounted somewhere else (mobo SATA controller, USB, whatever), then you can boot to single-user mode, and flash the firmware onto the controllers from there (there are FreeBSD-native tools available for download from LSI).  Then just reboot, and carry on as per normal.


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## Sebulon (Nov 11, 2012)

phoenix said:
			
		

> If you have / (root fs) mounted somewhere else (mobo SATA controller, USB, whatever), then you can boot to single-user mode, and flash the firmware onto the controllers from there (there are FreeBSD-native tools available for download from LSI).  Then just reboot, and carry on as per normal.



Big thanks for the tip man, that is really beneficial if you have a couple of machines and perhaps no physical access to them either.

/Sebulon


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