LSI 9220-8i raid controller in Optiplex 990 MT

Question

After a harddisk crash I decided to create a hardware raid 1 setup of two 3TB seagate disks. I can not use the onboard raid controller, because it does not support large drives (2TB+) in a raid configuration (correct me if I am wrong). So I acquired a raid controller card with support for large drives. Now the problem is that the Optiplex does not recognize the raid controller PCIe card during POST. I have testet the raid controller card on a older motherboard Asus P5B deluxe and here the raid controller card works fine.

The Optiplex 990 is flashed to newest A17 bios. The LSI 9220-8i is flashed to newest firmware P15. Tried both IT and IR versions of the firmware.

Now I hope someone here has experience getting a raid controller PCIe card to work in the Optiplex or ideas. The options in the Optiplex bios is very limited. I have tried disabling the different onboard components including the onboard sata/raid controller and I have tried the different sata modes ATA, ACHI and RAID to no avail. The bios simply shows PCIe slot 4 as empty. But the card is inserted and the heartbeat LED is blinking indicating that the card is running.

Any help with this problem is much appreciated. Also if you have a successfully installed another raid controller in a Optiplex 990 I would like to know which card is working.

Aouatif · Accepted Answer

Hi Soliemru,

I performed the test, and teh card is not detected in the slot4 at all- and it works on slot 1 just fine- i do not have any explanation, Excpet that it doens't work on the 16x wired as 4x.

Aouatif

soliemru · Answer

Bump

Aouatif · Answer

The optiplex 990 have 2 PCIe X16 and one is wired as X4 (Bandwidth 1GB/s one direction), which is the Slot 4 that you are using for your SAS card.

According to the specification for the SLI 9220-8i it needs at least : X8, PCIe 4000 MB/s

http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagecomponents/Pages/LSISAS9211-8i.aspx

So it's normal that your machine can't detect this card on the Slot 4 but if you test it on the slot 1 will work just fine.

PS: when you use a SAS card as your RAID controller it doens't matter which option you have on the onboard controller.

Hope this helps.

soliemru · Answer

Aouatif, thank you very much for looking into this.

I am actually aware that slot 4 is a 16/4 slot, but I found several posts on the internet reporting that this card works fine in a 16/4 PCI-e slot. For example

hardforum.com/showthread.php

LSI 9220-8i and IBM M1015 - 2 different names for the same card.

Also the PCI-express specification requires that PCI-e host and device negotiates the highest mutually supported number of lanes on initialization. The number of electrical lanes on host and device does not need to match.

The X8, PCIe 4000MB/s specification that you found is listed under PCI Data Burst Transfer Rates. I understand this as the maximum supported bandwidth supported by this card.

Slot 1 is occupied by the graphics card, so not really a workable solution to use this slot.

Thanks again for your input and please post if you have comments or ideas.

Aouatif · Answer

hmm...intersting

I have a optiplex 990 MT, so i'll take a PERC/8i card ( H310 based on LSI's Falcon 2008) that i'm actually using on a precison T7600- test it on the slot 4 on the Optiplex and let you know what's the result.

Have you contacted Dell technical support? if yes what did they say ?

PS: will perfrom the test this weekend , and will keep you posted.

Aouatif

soliemru · Answer

Hi Aouatif

That would indeed be an interesting test. According to this post

forums.servethehome.com/.../19-lsi-raid-controller-hba-equivalency-mapping.html

the H310 and M1015 are similar cards based on the same ROC chip LSI SAS2008 and the H310 also have a PCIe 2.0 x8 interface. I am looking forward to hear the result of the test.

I did contact Dell technical support and awaiting their response. I will post it hear when I get it.

Have a nice weekend

soliemru

soliemru · Answer

Hi Aouatif,

Thanks for testing this.

I also received an answer from Dell technical support. They write that it is not supported in that slot. I suppose they mean a 8 lane card is not supported in the 16/4 slot, as your test also discovered.

Now I wonder if there is a 4 lane raid card that works in the optiplex 990's 16/4 slot.

soliemru.

petey.at · Answer

The LSI 3ware 9650SE-4LPML controller works in slot 4 of my Optiplex 790.

Had the exact same problem with a leftover IBM ServeRAID BR10i (PCIe x8): did not work in slot 4, worked in slot 1. The LSI works in 4.

http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/3ware9650SE-4LPML.aspx

Greetings,

Petey

Locked Topics – Desktops General

LSI 9220-8i raid controller in Optiplex 990 MT

Was this post helpful?