Mass Storage Questions...

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by graywolf

If you pass thru the HBA/Controller Card, then you do not have the 2TB limit.
Currently have 3TB parity, 1x 3TB data, and 6x 2TB data drives on my M1015 which is passed thru (dedicated) to the unRaid VM. I have another 8 2TB drives hanging off an MV8 card which is also passed thru (dedicated) to unRaid VM.

I've finally found some time today to work on this again and am revisiting. Did you configure anything in the M1015's BIOS? I'm assuming you're simply using it as a "dumb" port multiplier, but wanted to ensure that was correct. I'm off now to try and figure out how to get vSphere to see this card and pass the drives through to the guest OS's.

EDIT #1: I made the change and set the M1015 for passthrough and proceeded to reboot the host, as instructed. I started up my XP client OS and I don't see the M1015 listed in XP's device manager. Do I need to add the M1015 hardware to the client via vSphere (aka ESXi) before XP will see it? This is exactly where I got stumped last time I tried. Figures. LOL! I have a Windows 7 guest OS and that does see the LSI controller, but the drives attached to it still aren't visible. My first thought is that the LSI doesn't work with XP, but I don't know why the W7 OS can't see the attached drives. Still trying...

EDIT #2: Adding the M1015 to the client OS through vSphere made the hardware wizard show up in XP. Now, I'm trying to find XP drivers for the damned thing. :-)

EDIT #3: I managed to find them, but they kept hanging during install, so I gave up. At the same time, I realized I didn't need the M1015 recognized by XP (where SageTV will be), but rather in the W7 install, which is going to be the "server" for everything but Sage. So, now, I'm back to trying to figure out why W7 can see the M1015, but not the attached drives. Do I need to set something in the M1015's WebUI before they'll be visible as individual drives?

EDIT #4: No sooner do I write that than do I realize that I was confusing an existing LSI controller in W7 with the M1015 I was trying to get working. I configured the M1015 with the correct driver and 1 of my drives showed up on one of the M1015 ports, but not the 3 on the other port. Time to check cabling, I think.

EDIT #5 (final weekend update): I ran out of time to troubleshoot, but the cabling seemed fine. While I was checking it, I recalled that I was previously able to set up a RAID array in the M1015's WebBIOS (I think that's what they call it) and see that in vSphere, so I think it's safe to say the cabling was correct this whole time. I'm really at a loss as to why the drives aren't visible to the guest OS, if the controller is. I have to be overlooking something.

Hopefully I'll have some time later this week and this coming weekend to work on it again. But, I don't know what I'm actually looking for. If anyone has some ideas, I'm all ears!

[Skirge01]

I think my previous post was lengthy enough, so I'm starting another reply.

I did some Googling and found this thread, which led me to this thread, specifically this reply.

Additionally, I noted this part at the beginning of that thread on the Lime forums:

It is also well known that using the initiator-target (IT) firmware mode is a great way to give up the RAID features of the cards, treating the cards instead as simple HBAs in IT mode. In turn, this allows operating systems that handle parity calculations to directly access the drives, thereby reducing the rate of TLER dropouts from RAID arrays among other things.

I believe this is why I can't see my drives. I think I need the M1015 to be in IT mode first, so I'm going to try flashing the BIOS and see what happens. I probably won't be able to try it until the weekend, though.

EDIT #1: I found a little time this evening and realized only one drive was being recognized. I had set only that drive to JBOD. Once I set the rest to JBOD, they also became visible (rookie mistake). I went ahead and flashed the BIOS anyhow and everything is still working. After adding the "new" flashed M1015 to the list of passthrough devices and removing the old M1015 from the guest OS and adding the new one, all attached drives were visible in the Windows 7 guest OS.

At this point, I need to figure out my storage plans. I need more drives if I'm going to migrate my recordings to the new card and I need to figure out what I'm going to use for some sort of drive failure protection.