NAME
mrsas
—
LSI MegaRAID 6Gb/s and 12Gb/s SAS+SATA
RAID controller driver
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:
device pci
device mrsas
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):
mrsas_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
The mrsas
driver will detect LSI's next
generation (6Gb/s and 12Gb/s) PCI Express SAS/SATA RAID controllers. See the
HARDWARE
section for the supported devices list. A
disk (virtual disk/physical disk) attached to the
mrsas
driver will be visible to the user through
camcontrol(8) as /dev/da? device
nodes. A simple management interface is also provided on a per-controller
basis via the /dev/mrsas? device node.
The mrsas
name is derived from the phrase
"MegaRAID SAS HBA", which is substantially different than the old
"MegaRAID" Driver
mfi(4) which does not connect targets to the
cam(4) layer and thus requires a new driver which attaches targets to
the cam(4) layer. Older MegaRAID controllers are supported by
mfi(4) and will not work with mrsas
, but both
the mfi(4) and mrsas
drivers can detect and
manage the LSI MegaRAID SAS 2208/2308/3008/3108 series of controllers.
The
device.hints(5) option is provided to tune the
mrsas
driver's behavior for LSI MegaRAID SAS
2208/2308/3008/3108 controllers. By default, the
mfi(4) driver will detect these controllers. See the
PRIORITY
section to know more about driver priority
for MR-Fusion devices.
mrsas
will provide a priority of (-30)
(between BUS_PROBE_DEFAULT
and
BUS_PROBE_LOW_PRIORITY
) at probe call for device
id's 0x005B, 0x005D, and 0x005F so that mrsas
does
not take control of these devices without user intervention.
Solid-state drives (SSD) get ATA TRIM support with
mrsas
if underlying adapter allows it. This may
require configuring SSD as Non-RAID drive rather then JBOD virtual mode.
HARDWARE
The mrsas
driver supports the following
hardware:
[ Thunderbolt 6Gb/s MR controller ]
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9265
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9266
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9267
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9270
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9272
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9285
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9286
- DELL PERC H810
- DELL PERC H710/P
[ Invader/Fury 12Gb/s MR controller ]
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9380
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9361
- LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341
- DELL PERC H830
- DELL PERC H730/P
- DELL PERC H330
CONFIGURATION
To disable Online Controller Reset(OCR) for a specific
mrsas
driver instance, set the following tunable
value in
loader.conf(5):
dev.mrsas.X.disable_ocr=1
where X is the adapter number.
To change the I/O timeout value for a specific
mrsas
driver instance, set the following tunable
value in
loader.conf(5):
dev.mrsas.X.mrsas_io_timeout=NNNNNN
where NNNNNN is the timeout value in milli-seconds.
To change the firmware fault check timer value for a specific
mrsas
driver instance, set the following tunable
value in
loader.conf(5):
dev.mrsas.X.mrsas_fw_fault_check_delay=NN
where NN is the fault check delay value in seconds.
The current number of active I/O commands is shown in the dev.mrsas.X.fw_outstanding sysctl(8) variable.
DEBUGGING
To enable debugging prints from the mrsas
driver, set the hw.mrsas.X.debug_level variable, where
X is the adapter number, either in
loader.conf(5) or via
sysctl(8). The following bits have the described effects:
- 0x01
- Enable informational prints.
- 0x02
- Enable tracing prints.
- 0x04
- Enable prints for driver faults.
- 0x08
- Enable prints for OCR and I/O timeout.
- 0x10
- Enable prints for AEN events.
PRIORITY
The mrsas
driver will always set a default
(-30) priority in the PCI subsystem for selection of MR-Fusion cards. (It is
between BUS_PROBE_DEFAULT
and
BUS_PROBE_LOW_PRIORITY
). MR-Fusion Controllers
include all cards with the Device IDs - 0x005B, 0x005D, 0x005F.
The mfi(4) driver will set a priority of either
BUS_PROBE_DEFAULT
or
BUS_PROBE_LOW_PRIORITY
(depending on the
device.hints setting) in the PCI subsystem for selection of MR-Fusion cards.
With the above design in place, the
mfi(4) driver will attach to a MR-Fusion card given that it has a
higher priority than mrsas
.
Using /boot/device.hints (as mentioned
below), the user can provide a preference for the
mrsas
driver to detect a MR-Fusion card instead of
the mfi(4) driver.
hw.mfi.mrsas_enable="1"
At boot time, the
mfi(4) driver will get priority to detect MR-Fusion controllers by
default. Before changing this default driver selection policy, LSI advises
users to understand how the driver selection policy works. LSI's policy is
to provide priority to the
mfi(4) driver to detect MR-Fusion cards, but allow for the ability to
choose the mrsas
driver to detect MR-Fusion
cards.
LSI recommends setting hw.mfi.mrsas_enable="0" for
customers who are using the older
mfi(4) driver and do not want to switch to
mrsas
. For those customers who are using a MR-Fusion
controller for the first time, LSI recommends using the
mrsas
driver and setting
hw.mfi.mrsas_enable="1".
Changing the default behavior is well tested under most
conditions, but unexpected behavior may pop up if more complex and
unrealistic operations are executed by switching between the
mfi(4) and mrsas
drivers for MR-Fusion.
Switching drivers is designed to happen only one time. Although multiple
switching is possible, it is not recommended. The user should decide from
Start of Day
which driver they want to use for the
MR-Fusion card.
The user may see different device names when switching from
mfi(4) to mrsas
. This behavior is
Functions As Designed
and the user needs to change
the fstab(5) entry manually if they are doing any experiments with
mfi(4) and mrsas
interoperability.
FILES
- /dev/da?
- array/logical disk interface
- /dev/mrsas?
- management interface
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The mrsas
driver first appeared in
FreeBSD 10.1.
mfi Driver:
mfi(4) is the old FreeBSD driver which started
with support for Gen-1 Controllers and was extended to support up to MR-Fusion
(Device ID = 0x005B, 0x005D, 0x005F).mrsas Driver:
mrsas
is the new driver reworked by LSI which supports
Thunderbolt and onward products. The SAS+SATA RAID controller with device id
0x005b is referred to as the Thunderbolt controller throughout this man
page.cam aware HBA drivers:
FreeBSD has a
cam(4) layer which attaches storage devices and provides a common
access mechanism to storage controllers and attached devices. The
mrsas
driver is
cam(4) aware and devices associated with mrsas
can be seen using
camcontrol(8). The
mfi(4) driver does not understand the
cam(4) layer and it directly associates storage disks to the block
layer.
Thunderbolt Controller:
This is the 6Gb/s
MegaRAID HBA card which has device id 0x005B.
Invader Controller:
This is 12Gb/s
MegaRAID HBA card which has device id 0x005D.
Fury Controller:
This is the 12Gb/s
MegaRAID HBA card which has device id 0x005F.
AUTHORS
The mrsas
driver and this manual page were
written by Kashyap Desai
<Kashyap.Desai@lsi.com>.
TODO
The driver does not support alias for device name (it is required when the user switches between two drivers and does not want to edit /etc/fstab manually).
The mrsas
driver exposes devices as
/dev/da?, whereas
mfi(4) exposes devices as /dev/mfid?.
mrsas
does not support the Linux Emulator
interface.
mrsas
will not work with
mfiutil(8).