Re: mfi driver performance too bad on LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i

> On 01 Aug 2016, at 15:12, O. Hartmann <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> First, thanks for responding so quickly.
> 
>> - The third option is to make the driver expose the SAS devices like a HBA
>> would do, so that they are visible to the CAM layer, and disks are handled by
>> the stock “da” driver, which is the ideal solution. 
> 
> I didn't find any switch which offers me the opportunity to put the PRAID
> CP400i into a simple HBA mode.

The switch is in the FreeBSD mfi driver, the loader tunable I mentioned, regardless of what the card
firmware does or pretends to do.

It’s not visible doing a "sysctl -a”, but it exists and it’s unique even. It’s defined here:

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/10/sys/dev/mfi/mfi_cam.c?revision=267084&view=markup
(line 93)

>> In order to do it you need a couple of things. You need to set the variable
>> hw.mfi.allow_cam_disk_passthrough=1 and to load the mfip.ko module.
>> 
>> When booting installation media, enter command mode and use these commands:
>> 
>> -----
>> set hw.mfi.allow_cam_disk_passthrough=1
>> load mfip
>> boot
>> ———
> 
> Well, I'm truly aware of this problemacy and solution (now), but I run into a
> henn-egg-problem, literally. As long as I can boot off of the installation
> medium, I have a kernel which deals with the setting. But the boot medium is
> supposed to be a SSD sitting with the PRAID CP400i controller itself! So, I
> never be able to boot off the system without crippling the ability to have a
> fullspeed ZFS configuration which I suppose to have with HBA mode, but not
> with any of the forced RAID modes offered by the controller. 

Been there plenty of times, even argued quite strongly about the advantages of ZFS against hardware based RAID
5 cards. :) I remember when the Dell salesmen couldn’t possibly understand why I wanted a “software based RAID rather than a
robust, hardware based solution” :D 

At worst, you can set up a simple boot from a thumb drive or, even better, a SATADOM installed inside the server. I guess it will
have SATA ports on the mainboard. That’s what I use to do. FreeNAS uses a similar approach as well. And some modern servers
also can boot from a SD card which you can use just to load the kernel.

Depending on the number of disks you have, you can also sacrifice two to set up a mirror with a “nomal” boot system, and using
the rest of the disks for ZFS. Actually I’ve got an old server I set up in 2012. It has 16 disks, and I created a logical volume (mirror)
with 2 disks for boot, the other 14 disks for ZFS.

If I installed this server now I would do it different, booting off a thumb drive. But I was younger and naiver :)






Borja.

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