[US]AMCC 9650SE-12ML 12-Port SATA PCIe SATA II Raid Controller ($12.99)


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  • 1 year later...
On 5/21/2016 at 7:22 PM, nightanole said:

From research, this card does not have an IT mode.  At best all you can do is load her up as "single" for each disk, but unraid can not talk to them directly.  HDPARM and other commands will not get to the drives.

 

Old thread, but just in case someone stumbles over it during a search (like me):

 

Be careful, according to documentation 3ware distinguishes between "single disk" and JBOD. The former is managed by the card and the disk has a 3ware Disk Control Block (DCB) written onto it that allows to recognise the disk regardless of the port to which it is connected. It also can later be expanded to a RAID by adding additional disks. The latter does not have a DCB and is handled differently by the controller. By default JBOD disks are hidden from the operating system. To make those available, "export JBOD" must be enabled in the BIOS of the card. The manual states that JBOD is "unsupported", here not with the meaning of "it doesn't work", but some features, e.g. write caching, are unavailable for disks configured as JBOD. There is even a how-to for importing JBODs from an older 3ware controller family.

 

The controller must be flashed to the latest available firmware, if disks larger than 2 TB shall be supported.

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On 9/21/2017 at 9:33 PM, tstor said:

 

Old thread, but just in case someone stumbles over it during a search (like me):

 

Be careful, according to documentation 3ware distinguishes between "single disk" and JBOD. The former is managed by the card and the disk has a 3ware Disk Control Block (DCB) written onto it that allows to recognise the disk regardless of the port to which it is connected. It also can later be expanded to a RAID by adding additional disks. The latter does not have a DCB and is handled differently by the controller. By default JBOD disks are hidden from the operating system. To make those available, "export JBOD" must be enabled in the BIOS of the card. The manual states that JBOD is "unsupported", here not with the meaning of "it doesn't work", but some features, e.g. write caching, are unavailable for disks configured as JBOD. There is even a how-to for importing JBODs from an older 3ware controller family.

 

The controller must be flashed to the latest available firmware, if disks larger than 2 TB shall be supported.

I just picked up this card on a whim... and I havent found what you are referring to... but it sounds like something that is happening to me...

 

the "bios" is not loaded... what ever that means... \

 

but unraid sees the card but not the disks... ideas?

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12 hours ago, mathomas3 said:

unraid sees the card but not the disks... ideas?

 

You mentioned in another thread that your 5TB disks are recognised, so I assume that you can see the disks, when you enter the card BIOS by interrupting the boot sequence. There you can configure RAID, single disk or JBOD. What you would need for unRAID is to set all disks to JBOD. Then look for a global setting in the 3ware BIOS called "export unconfigured disks". By default this is disabled. You need to change that, because as long as this remains disabled, the controller will hide all JBOD disks from the operating system, in this case unRAID. Now reboot and the disks should become visible. Alternatively 3ware has very nice command line tools that allow to interact with the card (command is "/cx set exportjbod=on", where c stands for controller x depends on the slot the card is in). They are on the same ISO as the firmware.

 

I am currently away from the server, so I can't tell you exactly in which BIOS screen you can find the critical setting, I think it should be under policy, then set "export unconfigured disks" to "yes".

 

Verifying with the CLI tools provides (mine is in slot 2):

 

/c2 show firmware

/c2 Firmware Version = FE9X 4.10.00.027

 

/c2 show exportjbod

/c2 JBOD Export Policy = on

 

/c2 show unitstatus

Unit  UnitType  Status         %RCmpl  %V/I/M  Stripe  Size(GB)  Cache  AVrfy
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
u0    JBOD      OK             -       -       -       5589.03   Ri     OFF
   
 

Note: I do not yet have any practical experience with unRAID and the 9650SE, currently I am running the unRAID release candidates in a VM on an Apple laptop. I bought an old Supermicro server which has the 24-port version of the card inside. In the state I bought it, it did not support disks beyond 2TB, so I did the BIOS upgrade and changed the settings which made it properly recognize the 6TB disk that I had inserted for testing. I probably used a debian or ubuntu memory stick that I had lying around for the BIOS upgrade, not the unRAID one.

 

Hope, this helps

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8 hours ago, tstor said:

 

You mentioned in another thread that your 5TB disks are recognised, so I assume that you can see the disks, when you enter the card BIOS by interrupting the boot sequence. There you can configure RAID, single disk or JBOD. What you would need for unRAID is to set all disks to JBOD. Then look for a global setting in the 3ware BIOS called "export unconfigured disks". By default this is disabled. You need to change that, because as long as this remains disabled, the controller will hide all JBOD disks from the operating system, in this case unRAID. Now reboot and the disks should become visible. Alternatively 3ware has very nice command line tools that allow to interact with the card (command is "/cx set exportjbod=on", where c stands for controller x depends on the slot the card is in). They are on the same ISO as the firmware.

 

I am currently away from the server, so I can't tell you exactly in which BIOS screen you can find the critical setting, I think it should be under policy, then set "export unconfigured disks" to "yes".

 

Verifying with the CLI tools provides (mine is in slot 2):

 

/c2 show firmware

/c2 Firmware Version = FE9X 4.10.00.027

 

/c2 show exportjbod

/c2 JBOD Export Policy = on

 

/c2 show unitstatus

Unit  UnitType  Status         %RCmpl  %V/I/M  Stripe  Size(GB)  Cache  AVrfy
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
u0    JBOD      OK             -       -       -       5589.03   Ri     OFF
   
 

Note: I do not yet have any practical experience with unRAID and the 9650SE, currently I am running the unRAID release candidates in a VM on an Apple laptop. I bought an old Supermicro server which has the 24-port version of the card inside. In the state I bought it, it did not support disks beyond 2TB, so I did the BIOS upgrade and changed the settings which made it properly recognize the 6TB disk that I had inserted for testing. I probably used a debian or ubuntu memory stick that I had lying around for the BIOS upgrade, not the unRAID one.

 

Hope, this helps

Sounds like I need to install the BIOS... I upgraded the Firmware... but currently the card doesnt have the BIOS installed...

 

I will look into that Thanks

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  • 5 weeks later...
On 9/29/2017 at 12:45 PM, mathomas3 said:

I will look into that Thanks

 

Did you get our card running? In the mean time I have moved from my unRAID test VM to a real server using the 9650SE. So far everything works, but performance is rather low:

- read performance is acceptable, but not good

- write performance in default read/modify/write mode is poor

- write performance in turbo mode is a bit better, but still slow

 

I also have a LSI card, but cannot yet compare, because it requires different cables that have not yet arrived.

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