Flashing H310/H710 RAID Controllers to LSI IT Mode
20#RAID #ITMode #Linux
Full steps can be found at https://i12bretro.github.io/tutorials...
Background
I recently purchased a Dell Poweredge server with a H310 RAID controller. One of the purposes of the new server is to run TrueNAS Scale as a VM inside Proxmox. To get the best performance out of TrueNAS and ZFS, the H310 needs to be flashed to LSI IT mode so ZFS can have direct access to the drives. IT mode also improves the disk drive IOPS (Input/output operations per second) performance.
What is LSI IT Mode?
IT (Initiator Target) mode essentially disables the hardware RAID capabilities of the controller, allowing the operating system to see and interact with each disk drive directly.
Disclaimer
This process will overwrite the firmware on the RAID controller. If not done correctly, the process can damage and brick the RAID controller.
Things You Will Need
- A USB flash drive, at least 4 GB https://amzn.to/3wkR5ju | https://amzn.to/3qkrJ1p | https://amzn.to/3Nhu9b9
- One of the following hardware RAID controllers
H310 Mini Mono (⇦ used in this tutorial)
H310 Full Size
H710 Mini Mono
H710P Mini Mono
H710 Full Size
H710P Full Size
H810 Full Size
Before You Begin
01. Remove the battery from the RAID controller
02. Disable the following technologies in the BIOS
- Virtualization
- SR-IOV
- IOMMU
06. Set the Boot Mode to BIOS/Legacy (not UEFI)
Preparing the Flash Utilities
Huge thanks to http://fohdeesha.com for compiling the software and steps to complete the flashing process into an easy to follow procedure.
01. Download the PERC flashing utilities https://fohdeesha.com/docs/store/perc...
02. Download the Ventoy installer https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
03. Extract the downloaded perc-crossflash .zip file
04. Extract the downloaded Ventoy .zip file
05. Run Ventoy2Disk.exe
06. Plug in a USB flash drive at least 4 GB in size
07. Click the refresh icon
08. Select the flash drive from the device dropdown
09. Click the Install button
10. After the installation completes, copy the Linux and FreeDOS .iso files from the extracted perc-crossflash folder to the Ventoy partition
11. Safely remove the USB flash drive
12. Plug the flash drive into the target server
Collecting RAID Controller Information
01. Power on the server hardware ≫ Boot to the flash drive
02. Select the FreeDOS .iso from the Ventoy menu
03. Once FreeDOS has booted, run the following command
info
04. Take a photo of and/or carefully write down the SAS address from the output
05. Compare the output Product Name and ChipRevision (H310 Mini in this example) to the listing on https://fohdeesha.com/docs/perc.html#... If there isn't an EXACT MATCH stop
06. Shutdown or reboot the server
Flashing to IT Mode
The steps below are specific to the H310 Mini RAID controller in my device (https://fohdeesha.com/docs/H310.html). Make sure to follow the steps for your target RAID controller model.
01. Power on the server hardware ≫ Boot to the flash drive
02. Select the Linux .iso from the Ventoy menu
03. Log into Linux using the username user and password live
04. If you plan to SSH into the device, run the following command to output the IP address and connect via SSH
ipinfo
05. Continue with the following commands in Linux on the target server device
elevate to root shell
sudo su -
output the SAS address
take a photo of and/or carefully write down the SAS address from the output
it will be required after the flashing process
sas-mega
flash the raid controller firmware
H310-Mini
once the flash completes without errors, reboot the server
reboot now
06. Boot to the flash drive
07. Select the Linux .iso from the Ventoy menu
NOTE: If you see kernel panic errors during startup, shutdown the server hardware and power it back on and boot back into Linux from Ventoy
08. Log back into Linux using the username user and password live
09. Continue with the following commands
elevate to root shell
sudo su -
set the sas address
setsas ≪%sas address from output earlier%≫
output info about the new state of the controller
info
10. If you'll be booting from drives attached to the RAID controller, continue with the following steps to flash the boot ROM images
flash bios/legacy boot rom
flashboot /root/Bootloaders/mptsas2.rom
flash uefi boot rom
flashboot /root/Bootloaders/x64sas2.rom
shutdown the system
....Full steps can be found on GitHub [link at the top]
Connect with me and others ###
★ Discord: / discord
★ Reddit: / i12bretro
★ Twitter: / i12bretro