Dell S300 controller

[Jack Peirce]

Does anyone know if the Dell PERC S300 controller will work under
OpenBSD as a non-RAID SAS HBA? It has an LSI SAS 1068e, but I didn't
know if they did something to make it not work as an HBA. Thanks.

I don't believe the controller will automatically export unconfigured
drives as single drive units. LSI makes 2 different versions of
firmware for the unbranded controllers, IR mode for RAID and IT mode
for HBA, but it's not possible/easy to flash them to the Dell branded
controllers.

Create RAID0 single drive units on each disk and it should export.

[Stuart Henderson]

Post by Jack Peirce

Does anyone know if the Dell PERC S300 controller will work under
OpenBSD as a non-RAID SAS HBA? It has an LSI SAS 1068e, but I didn't
know if they did something to make it not work as an HBA. Thanks.

I don't believe the controller will automatically export unconfigured
drives as single drive units. LSI makes 2 different versions of
firmware for the unbranded controllers, IR mode for RAID and IT mode
for HBA, but it's not possible/easy to flash them to the Dell branded
controllers.
Create RAID0 single drive units on each disk and it should export.

AFAIK the S300 doesn't work at all on OpenBSD (or Linux). It was only ever
meant to work with Windows.

[Jim Giannoules]

Post by Stuart Henderson

Post by Jack Peirce

Does anyone know if the Dell PERC S300 controller will work under
OpenBSD as a non-RAID SAS HBA? It has an LSI SAS 1068e, but I didn't
know if they did something to make it not work as an HBA. Thanks.

I don't believe the controller will automatically export unconfigured
drives as single drive units. LSI makes 2 different versions of
firmware for the unbranded controllers, IR mode for RAID and IT mode
for HBA, but it's not possible/easy to flash them to the Dell branded
controllers.
Create RAID0 single drive units on each disk and it should export.

AFAIK the S300 doesn't work at all on OpenBSD (or Linux). It was only ever
meant to work with Windows.

The Dell PERC S300 is a "SWRAID" product. It is correct that the hardware is an LSI1068e, but programmed with modified PCI IDs (all four a diffferent: vendor, device, sub-vendor, sub-device). The expansion ROM and drivers are from DotHill systems and are looking for these update IDs. The controller itself is running the IR/IT firmware with IR soft-disabled. To turn the controller back into a normal LSI1068e you would need to update the expansion ROM and the PCI IDs.

As a science experiment you might be able to modify mpi(4) to look for the S300 IDs, but that would be an OS runtime only fix.


-Jim

[David Gwynne]

Post by Jim Giannoules

Post by Stuart Henderson

Post by Jack Peirce

Does anyone know if the Dell PERC S300 controller will work under
OpenBSD as a non-RAID SAS HBA? It has an LSI SAS 1068e, but I didn't
know if they did something to make it not work as an HBA. Thanks.

I don't believe the controller will automatically export unconfigured
drives as single drive units. LSI makes 2 different versions of
firmware for the unbranded controllers, IR mode for RAID and IT mode
for HBA, but it's not possible/easy to flash them to the Dell branded
controllers.
Create RAID0 single drive units on each disk and it should export.

AFAIK the S300 doesn't work at all on OpenBSD (or Linux). It was only ever
meant to work with Windows.

The Dell PERC S300 is a "SWRAID" product. It is correct that the hardware is an LSI1068e, but programmed with modified PCI IDs (all four a diffferent: vendor, device, sub-vendor, sub-device). The expansion ROM and drivers are from DotHill systems and are looking for these update IDs. The controller itself is running the IR/IT firmware with IR soft-disabled. To turn the controller back into a normal LSI1068e you would need to update the expansion ROM and the PCI IDs.
As a science experiment you might be able to modify mpi(4) to look for the S300 IDs, but that would be an OS runtime only fix.

im pretty sure the s300 is actually the ahci ports coming off the motherboard. if its in ahci mode it should Just Work(tm) as a sata controller. not sas, sorry.

the h200 was the last straight sas hba you could get in a dell. if you want sas ports in their more recent machines you can configure physical disks on a h330 or h730, both of which are mfii controllers.

dlg

[Steve Shockley]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

Post by David Gwynne
im pretty sure the s300 is actually the ahci ports coming off the motherboard. if its in ahci mode it should Just Work(tm) as a sata controller. not sas, sorry.

I got the S300 with a used R210-II; it actually is a PCIe card with an
SFF-8484 connector with a fanout cable for the drives. I'll probably
just pull the card from this machine and use the onboard SATA, since the
drives are SATA anyway. (I guess the previous owner got the S300 for
softraid.)

Post by David Gwynne
The Dell PERC S300 is a "SWRAID" product. It is correct that the

hardware is an LSI1068e, but programmed with modified PCI IDs (all four
a diffferent: vendor, device, sub-vendor, sub-device). The expansion ROM
and drivers are from DotHill systems and are looking for these update
IDs. The controller itself is running the IR/IT firmware with IR
soft-disabled. To turn the controller back into a normal LSI1068e you
would need to update the expansion ROM and the PCI IDs.

Thanks for the info. If I can't do anything else with it I'll probably
try this as a last-ditch effort.

Post by David Gwynne
As a science experiment you might be able to modify mpi(4) to look

for the S300 IDs, but that would be an OS runtime only fix.

This is probably worth trying, thanks.