Dell R610 with H310 Drive Controller

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 18:01:33 +0000

When using some relatively inexpensive parts to build a test three server Ceph solution, it seems that drive controllers and SSD drive combinations are finicky. Specifically, it seems that a Dell H310 controller may have issues with some or all Samsung SSD drives.

At Slow writes PERC H700 and Samsung 850 PRO SSD, a Dell response indicates:

The Samsung 850 Pro SSDs are not validated or certified to work with Dell controllers and as such there is a communication mismatch between the drives and the controller at the firmware level. As a result, you are bound to realize unexpected poor Read and Write performance regardless of controller cache settings.

It said that the Samsung 840 drive will work with the controllers. With Broadcom taking over LSI, they've removed old links, so documents are hard to find now. In trying to follow a document trail:

Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) H310, H710, H710P, and H810User’s Guide on page 9 says the H310 has an LSI2008 chipset. I'm looking at the H310 as it provides for direct passthrough to the drives with out RAID. The card has no caching.
LSI SAS 2008 RAID Controller/ HBA Information - An H310 is similar to the LSI9211-8i
Check Interoperability and Compatibility

To use the H310 for non-cache passthrough, it is recommended to flash the card in IT mode. I'll try this once I obtain the card. In the meantime, some possibly relevant links to the drivers and process:

Disk Controller features and Queue Depth? - from 2014, discusses queue depth and diagnostic commands.
Flashing the H310 Mono Mini to IT mode has a link to probably the best link to a flashing tutorial. But is complicated for flashing the mini H310. From the notes: the R610 is an 11th generation server, and when the mini H310 is reflashed to IT mode, the server probably won't reboot.
Crossflashing the Dell PERC H200 and H310 to the LSI 9211-8i (from year 2018) implies that the H310 is the equivalent of an LSI 9211-8i. Also, a Dell H200 and an H310 must be similar from a firmware perspective.
Flashing IT Firmware to the LSI SAS9211-8i HBA - 2012 - flash to a pci card
How to crossflash PERC H310 to IT mode LSI 9211-8i firmware (HBA for FreeNAS, UnRAID) - an article from 2017 with better, more native instructions
Crossflash Dell PERC H310 to LSI 9211-8i IT Mode Using Legacy (DOS) and UEFI Method (HBA Firmware + BIOS)
PERC H310 - LSI 9211-8i - $50 - notes on purchase, install, and upgrade of card.
Problems Flashing Dell Perc H310 - discusses H310 in PCI slot instead
How-to Flash Dell Perc H310 with IT Firmware To Change Queue Depth from 25 to 600
Updated: SAS HBA crossflashing or flashing to IT mode, Dell Perc H200 and H310 from 2016 where is is suggested that "Integrated, Mini or Mini Mono Perc H310 do NOT try to crossflash with these steps".
DELL PERC H310/H710/H710P/H810 Controllers driver version 5.1.112.64,A00 - a starting point for the search of appropriate drivers
LINUX PERCCLI Utility For All Dell HBA/PERC Controllers - and the starting point for command line utilities
LSI MegaRAID SAS - some notes on the CLI utilities
Doing battle with a Dell R620 and Ubuntu - has some remarks on H310 testing.
H310 and Fan Noise
Low random read/write on samsung 840 250gb ssd - spectre bios upgrades can destroy random read/write times

Drive Information:

Cluster test:

rados bench -p vm_storage 10 write -b 4M -t 16"

2022/04/13 - challenges

In a Dell R620, with an LSI SAS card, it took a while to find a utility to communicate with the card. Over the fold are some results:
Continue reading "Dell R610 with H310 Drive Controller"

Raymond P. Burkholder - Things I Do - Ceph

Dell R610 with H310 Drive Controller

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