Flashing a raid card to a different firmware takes about five minutes, however if you have never done it before, the research process can be an order of magnitude higher. I spent about a day parsing all the blogs, forum posts, and subreddits that discuss flashing the LSI9211 HBA firmware to IT mode on compatible cards.
The process is simple:
BIOS Mode:
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin megarec -cleanflash 0 sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605B0xxxxxxxx (x = numbers for SAS address)
UEFI Mode:
efi_shell> fs0: fs0:\> sas2flash.efi -o -e 6 fs0:\> sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom fs0:\> exit efi_shell> quit
In a nutshell:
- Create FreeDOS boot disk
- Boot to BIOS/UEFI mode
- Erase SBR (Fusion Mode)
- Erase firmware (backup old)
- Load new firmware + BIOS
- Reboot
My r710 mobo does not play well with cross flashing so I used my mining rig which has an MSI Z270 SLI Plus Motherboard — It worked!
I got the FreeDOS image from here.
A lot of guides fail to mention that you have to do the following after you create the bootable usb.
1. Create a directory called: efi and sub-directory called boot.
2. Place the Shell_Full.efi file in the boot directory and rename it to bootx64.efi
BIOS or UEFI alone didn’t work for me I had to use a combination of both.
I wiped the firmware in BIOS mode with FreeDOS using the two megarec commands and then did a UEFI boot and flashed the firmware.
I have read so many cries for help because of errors such as:
“Failed to initialize PAL”
Which the consensus answer is to boot using UEFI. This worked for me, but there’s more.
When I tried to flash in UEFI mode I got a less frequent error:
“No LSI SAS adapters found”
This forum post pulled me out of deep water. Wait, there’s more.
After I was done flashing and having a proud moment, I noticed my firmware version:
“15.00.00.00”
The most recommended version was p16 however, at the time of this post it is currently p20. (20.00.07.00).
I re-flashed and all was well again. FreeNAS detected all my drives and I went on to do the burn-in process.
A quick note for r710 owners. If you have the PERC 6i Raid Card you will have to get SFF-8087 reverse breakout cables and make sure they have the 90 degree bend.
All of this was done so I can finish building out my r710 as an ESXi Server with FreeNAS, which I’ll document and share in a future blog post(s) for anyone else considering the same setup
Thanks for reading.
Great guide! really helped me out.
For your UFEI steps, there’s a couple of typos:
sas2lash.efi should be sas2flash.efi & 211it.bin should be 2118it.bin
You also need to do the following step at the end:
fs0:\> sas2flash.efi -o -sasadd 500605B0xxxxxxxx (x = numbers for SAS address)
Thanks for that Stephen, I made the corrections.
Just wonder if there’s another link. This one not working – I got the FreeDOS image from here. ….
MK, I updated the link and it works now. Thanks. I may host the file myself for future folks.