Re: The state of SAS

[Mike Pumford <mpumford%mudcovered.org.uk@localhost>]

On 11/03/2019 15:11, Staffan Thomén wrote:
> Flashing sounds dangerous, and I expect I'd need at least a second card 
> to get the existing data off my RAID sets unless there are firmwares 
> that do both RAID and passthru.
Yes you would lose access to the raid sets managed by the card and would 
have to use raidframe and software raid to get the raid behaviour back 
which would involve reconstructing the filesystems from scratch. If you 
are getting a second card it might be easier to just use that for the 
tape drive and leave the existing working card alone. I also seem to 
recall that there was a way to unbrick a card if something goes wrong 
but my memory could be faulty. Its easy to be blase about this sort of 
thing when the cards you are potentially bricking can be fixed by your 
client if something goes wrong.

> Does LSI provide official images or is it a question of someone grabbing 
> firmware images of another card that just happens to work?
Last time I looked (which was about 12 months ago) LSI did offer firmwre 
downloads from their website. Its entirely possible that a newer raid 
firmware might allow passthrough of the tape drive so that's also worth 
considering as well. Ultimately with the LSI cards device discovery is 
entirely in the hands of the card firmware (which it then passes to the OS).

Mike