I have some inherited gear I’d like to make into a storage array if possible – hosts with multiple LSI/Broadcom 9300-8i HBAs and Supermicro SC946ED JBOD disk trays. I’d like to connect multiple hosts in the usual HA style (see https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/chassis/4U/SC946ED.pdf, appendix C, page 5, top image). When the mpt3sas kernel module loads on the second connected host all drives begin cycling through disconnect/reconnect in blocks aligned with the boundaries of the physical expander backplanes in the bottom of the JBOD chassis. I expect this when using the 9300-8i HBA because unlike the 9300-8e the 8i does not support raid or zoning. I was expecting to be able to disable the SAS3 drive/controller default behavior of doing a bus reset scan on host connection. But I can’t find any information on how to do that with these specific products.
This scenario is just the plain old one we used to do with the old 9th-gen LSI (pre-LSI-Broadcom-merger) non-zoning, non-raid-hba hardware; you want to zone/multihost but don’t have either a downstream sas3 expander or upstream HBA that supports zoning or multi-host termination. The traditional solution is to just disable the default behavior that sends a bus init/scan/reset on HBA disconnect/connect. The basic idea is to move responsibility for bus scans up one level, out of the sas fabric and up into software on the connected server(s). Does anyone else have this hardware combination working?
I did the usual firmware updates first. Firmware for both the 946ED and 93008i HBAs is at the latest available from Supermicro/LSI/Broadcom.
I tried filing tickets / discussing with Supermicro and LSI/Broadcom. LSI punted to Supermicro and would not discuss anything past firmware updates. Supermicro repeatedly sent me documentation on and references to other generations of disk tray with different expander modules and topologies. This went on for more than a year so if at all possible I’d like to look at any other source.
I did the usual documentation searches. There is plenty online on both products, all in the form of https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/chassis/4U/SC946ED.pdf or references to same. Neither the 9300-8i HBA nor SC946ED-4U-JBOD nor the 946ED expander module documentation has either command api for ipmi or serial or diagrams for the module control board pinout blocks. There is no indication on the expander modules other than that there are 4 berg-style configuration jumper blocks (these are marked separate from the fab testpoint block).