Flashing H310/H710 RAID Controllers to LSI IT Mode

#RAID #ITMode #Linux

Full steps can be found at https://i12bretro.github.io/tutorials...

Background
I recently purchased a Dell Poweredge server with a H310 RAID controller. One of the purposes of the new server is to run TrueNAS Scale as a VM inside Proxmox. To get the best performance out of TrueNAS and ZFS, the H310 needs to be flashed to LSI IT mode so ZFS can have direct access to the drives. IT mode also improves the disk drive IOPS (Input/output operations per second) performance.
 
What is LSI IT Mode?
IT (Initiator Target) mode essentially disables the hardware RAID capabilities of the controller, allowing the operating system to see and interact with each disk drive directly.
 
Disclaimer
This process will overwrite the firmware on the RAID controller. If not done correctly, the process can damage and brick the RAID controller.
 
Things You Will Need
   - A USB flash drive, at least 4 GB  https://amzn.to/3wkR5ju |  https://amzn.to/3qkrJ1p |  https://amzn.to/3Nhu9b9
   - One of the following hardware RAID controllers
H310 Mini Mono (⇦ used in this tutorial)
H310 Full Size
H710 Mini Mono
H710P Mini Mono
H710 Full Size
H710P Full Size
H810 Full Size
 
Before You Begin
   01. Remove the battery from the RAID controller
   02. Disable the following technologies in the BIOS
      - Virtualization
      - SR-IOV
      - IOMMU
   06. Set the Boot Mode to BIOS/Legacy (not UEFI)
 
Preparing the Flash Utilities
Huge thanks to  http://fohdeesha.com for compiling the software and steps to complete the flashing process into an easy to follow procedure.
 
   01. Download the PERC flashing utilities  https://fohdeesha.com/docs/store/perc...
   02. Download the Ventoy installer  https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
   03. Extract the downloaded perc-crossflash .zip file
   04. Extract the downloaded Ventoy .zip file
   05. Run Ventoy2Disk.exe
   06. Plug in a USB flash drive at least 4 GB in size
   07. Click the refresh icon
   08. Select the flash drive from the device dropdown
   09. Click the Install button
   10. After the installation completes, copy the Linux and FreeDOS .iso files from the extracted perc-crossflash folder to the Ventoy partition
   11. Safely remove the USB flash drive
   12. Plug the flash drive into the target server
 
Collecting RAID Controller Information
   01. Power on the server hardware ≫ Boot to the flash drive
   02. Select the FreeDOS .iso from the Ventoy menu
   03. Once FreeDOS has booted, run the following command
         info
   04. Take a photo of and/or carefully write down the SAS address from the output
   05. Compare the output Product Name and ChipRevision (H310 Mini in this example) to the listing on https://fohdeesha.com/docs/perc.html#... If there isn't an EXACT MATCH stop
   06. Shutdown or reboot the server
 
Flashing to IT Mode
The steps below are specific to the H310 Mini RAID controller in my device (https://fohdeesha.com/docs/H310.html). Make sure to follow the steps for your target RAID controller model.
 
   01. Power on the server hardware ≫ Boot to the flash drive
   02. Select the Linux .iso from the Ventoy menu
   03. Log into Linux using the username user and password live
   04. If you plan to SSH into the device, run the following command to output the IP address and connect via SSH
         ipinfo
   05. Continue with the following commands in Linux on the target server device
         elevate to root shell
         sudo su -
         output the SAS address
         take a photo of and/or carefully write down the SAS address from the output
         it will be required after the flashing process
         sas-mega
         flash the raid controller firmware
         H310-Mini
         once the flash completes without errors, reboot the server
         reboot now
   06. Boot to the flash drive
   07. Select the Linux .iso from the Ventoy menu
         NOTE: If you see kernel panic errors during startup, shutdown the server hardware and power it back on and boot back into Linux from Ventoy
   08. Log back into Linux using the username user and password live
   09. Continue with the following commands
         elevate to root shell
         sudo su -
         set the sas address
         setsas ≪%sas address from output earlier%≫
         output info about the new state of the controller
         info
   10. If you'll be booting from drives attached to the RAID controller, continue with the following steps to flash the boot ROM images
         flash bios/legacy boot rom
         flashboot /root/Bootloaders/mptsas2.rom
         flash uefi boot rom
         flashboot /root/Bootloaders/x64sas2.rom
         shutdown the system


....Full steps can be found on GitHub [link at the top]


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