IBM M5110e internal raid controller to IT mode HBA

I have managed to get a new (second hand) IBM M4 rackmount server to replace the M3 that I currently use. The only problem is that these servers come with an internal serverRaid M5110e card as part of the mothernoard – and it seems like there is no write-ups on getting this PCIe device working as a HBA with ZFS (at least on the IBM M4). There are plenty of posts saying to just forget it and use a HBA in IT mode, but I did find instructions on the same LSI chipset in a MicroServer being flashed to IT mode. this is just what we need for software raid and ZFS.

So down the rabbit hole I went…

Flash a IBM M5110e to IT

The M5110e is a rebranded LSI 2208 and with the help from these sources:
video from Art of Server
a forum post by spikebyte on serverbuilds.net
a blog post by My Wired House

I went digging and managed to flash the internal M5110e / sas2208 to a sas2308 IT mode firmware.

Tools:

You will want to download the following:

Method:

Write a bootable freeDOS USB disk with Rufus and then extract the Bootx64.efi file into the efi/boot/ folder (rename the 2.x version if you want to keep both. We have to use a version 1.x of the uefi shell to run the sas2flash as it won’t work on v2.x

Create a temp folder somewhere <TEMP> and extract these to it:

  • All the files from lsi2208fixer.iso\lsi_dos\ to root of <TEMP>
  • sas2flsh.exe from 9207_8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows\sas2flash_dos_rel\ to root of <TEMP>. The DOS version doesn’t seem to work so we could miss this step out as we will be using the .efi version
  • The firmware 9207-8.bin from 9207_8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip\9207_8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows\Firmware\HBA_9207_8i_IT\ to root of <TEMP>
  • sas2flash.efi from Installer_P20_for_UEFI.zip\Installer_P20_for_UEFI\sas2flash_efi_ebc_rel\ to root of <TEMP>
  • sbrempty.bin (from the zip) to root of <TEMP>
  • megacli.exe from MegaCLI – 5.3 to root of <TEMP>
  • Now check all the files in <TEMP> are there and then copy from <TEMP> to the root of the Rufus created USB
File list to copy to the root of the USB

Next we need to get to flashing the M5110e to IT mode (sas2208 IR to 2308 IT). You will want disconnect any drives attached to the M5110e. Now boot into freeDOS on the USB drive, you may have to boot the USB drive as “Legacy Only”.

  • Get your RAID cards index number 
    megarec -adplist
  • Get your cards sas address
    megacli -adpAllInfo -a0
    You need to find the 16 digit unique address 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx, write this down.
  • Clear the flash of the card 
    megarec -cleanflash 0 
    (Replace 0 with the index number of your RAID card)
  • Reboot the server back to freeDOS
  • Flash the card with the recovery rom 
    megarec -m0flash 0 2208_16.rom 
    This will take a good 3+ minutes so be patient
  • Reboot the server back to freeDOS
  • Back up your SBR and SBD for the M5110e card
    megarec -readsbr 0 smc2208.sbr
    megarec -readspd 0 smc2208.spd
  • Wipe the card by overwriting the bin with the empty one 
    megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
  • Clean the flash again
    megarec -cleanflash 0
  • Reboot into your UEFI Terminal or the v1.x that you downloaded and wrote the USB
  • Check to see if you can see the M5110e card with the sas2flash EFI command, it should now be listed as non functioning sas 2208
    sas2flash -list
  • Flash it with the bin for 2308 IT
    sas2flash -o -f 9207-8.bin
  • Check if it flashed correctly 
    sas2flash -list 
    It should now be listed as a sas2308
  • Give it a SAS address, this is the 16 digit address from step 2
    sas2flash -o -sasadd 50050760581212c0
  • Next flash the UEFI or BIOS driver to the card (Thanks @Warm_Witness9404 for the tip)
    sas2flash.efi -c 0 -b mptsas2.rom (for BIOS)
    sas2flash.efi -c 0 -b x64sas2.rom (for UEFI)

Your M5110e should now be in a fully functional IT mode, Power everything off, plug your drives and test that they now show up as standard drives in your OS of choice.

Now that the drives are not subject to any hardware raid shenanigans you should be able to create a ZFS pool and have all for that goodness


With full SMART test working (or in this drive’s case failing)

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