mfi vs mps vs firmware images

[Mike Tancsa]

I have been using a pair of LSI branded 9420-8si cards in my backup
server on RELENG_10 since November 2014 (firmware from Oct 2014 off the
LSI site) and so far so good. However, a number of other users have
warned me not to use the mfi driver, and stick with the MPS driver and
some older versions of the firmware aimed at an IBM m1015. I use the
cards for zfs and to expose the disks individually through cam with the
mfip module and so far so good.
However, folks over on the FreeNAS forum are convinced I am flirting
with data loss using the supposed disastrous mfi driver/firmware combo.
Can anyone shed light on the state of these cards and how best to use
them ? I havent really seen anything on the FreeBSD lists in the past
year indicating serious issues, but then again, I only started using
these cards since Novmeber of last year.

I do zfs scrubs every month and they have yet to show errors on my 32TB
pool. (a number of raidz2s)


# mfiutil show adapter
mfi0 Adapter:
Product Name: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-8i
Serial Number: SP34906493
Firmware: 20.13.1-0208
RAID Levels: JBOD, RAID0, RAID1, RAID10
Battery Backup: not present
NVRAM: 32K
Onboard Memory: 0M
Minimum Stripe: 8K
Maximum Stripe: 64K
# mfiutil show firmware
mfi0 Firmware Package Version: 20.13.1-0208
mfi0 Firmware Images:
Name Version Date Time Status
BIOS 4.38.02.2_4.16.08.00_0x06060A05 07/23/2014
07/23/2014
active
PCLI 03.02-020:#%00009 May 07 2012 13:21:53 active
BCON 4.0-61-e_50-Rel Sep 09 2014 11:45:57 active
NVDT 3.09.03-0064 Oct 06 2014 12:00:15 active
APP 2.130.404-3836 Oct 16 2014 06:50:12 active
BTBL 2.02.00.00-0001 Aug 18 2010 11:44:44 active
# mfiutil show drives
mfi0 Physical Drives:
8 ( 3726G) JBOD <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80
serial=WD-WCC4E0911515> SATA E1:S1
9 ( 3726G) JBOD <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A82
serial=WD-WCC4E9Y80F79> SATA E1:S0
10 ( 3726G) JBOD <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80
serial=WD-WCC4E0916074> SATA E1:S3
11 ( 3726G) JBOD <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80
serial=WD-WCC4E0893433> SATA E1:S2
13 ( 3726G) JBOD <WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A82
serial=WD-WCC4E9Y80J8A> SATA E1:S5

mfi0: <Drake Skinny> port 0x6000-0x60ff mem
0xb1460000-0xb1463fff,0xb1400000-0xb143ffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
mfi0: Using MSI
mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 4.23
mfip0: <SCSI Passthrough Bus> on mfi0

}# pciconf -lvcb mfi0
***@pci0:1:0:0: class=0x010400 card=0x92401000 chip=0x00731000
rev=0x03 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'LSI Logic / Symbios Logic'
device = 'MegaRAID SAS 2008 [Falcon]'
class = mass storage
subclass = RAID
bar [10] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x6000, size 256, enabled
bar [14] = type Memory, range 64, base 0xb1460000, size 16384,
enabled
bar [1c] = type Memory, range 64, base 0xb1400000, size 262144,
enabled
cap 01[50] = powerspec 3 supports D0 D1 D2 D3 current D0
cap 10[68] = PCI-Express 2 endpoint max data 256(4096) FLR link x2(x8)
speed 5.0(5.0) ASPM disabled(L0s)
cap 03[d0] = VPD
cap 05[a8] = MSI supports 1 message, 64 bit enabled with 1 message
cap 11[c0] = MSI-X supports 15 messages
Table in map 0x14[0x2000], PBA in map 0x14[0x3800]
ecap 0001[100] = AER 1 1 fatal 0 non-fatal 0 corrected
ecap 0004[138] = Power Budgeting 1


Box is running 10.1-STABLE FreeBSD 10.1-STABLE #10 r275939 AMD64

---Mike

[Zane C. B-H.]

Post by Mike Tancsa
I have been using a pair of LSI branded 9420-8si cards in my backup
server on RELENG_10 since November 2014 (firmware from Oct 2014 off
the LSI site) and so far so good. However, a number of other users
have warned me not to use the mfi driver, and stick with the MPS
driver and some older versions of the firmware aimed at an IBM m1015.
I use the cards for zfs and to expose the disks individually through
cam with the mfip module and so far so good.
However, folks over on the FreeNAS forum are convinced I am flirting
with data loss using the supposed disastrous mfi driver/firmware
combo. Can anyone shed light on the state of these cards and how
best to use them ? I havent really seen anything on the FreeBSD lists
in the past year indicating serious issues, but then again, I only
started using these cards since Novmeber of last year.
I do zfs scrubs every month and they have yet to show errors on my
32TB pool. (a number of raidz2s)

Hoi chummer,

It is worth noting that these are both two very different beasts.

The MFI does not give you direct access to the drives. You have to setup
actual RAID arrays with it. If you are using ZFS, this is likely not
what
you are wanting to do.

The MPS version allows you to talk to the actual drives and just a
simple
HBA. This makes stuff like gmirror and ZFS work nicely with it.

Personally I hate the MegaRAID MFI drek and it is one of my least
favorite
things about Dells after their buggy FW updater...