C220 M3: Passthrough disks on RAID SAS 2008M to BIOS

[PetterOne]

Is it possible to make disks connected to 

Cisco UCSC RAID SAS 2008M-8i (SLOT-MEZZ)

visible/handled by the BIOS? Like some sort of HBA mode.

I need to install CentOS 8, and the drivers for this RAID controller has been removed.

Product Name: UCS C220 M3S

Firmware Version: 3.0(4l)

Side quest(ion): How do you think upgrading to 3.0(4p) will affect server performance? (I'm thinking about those microcode updates in response to spectre/meltdown.)

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

This card can be used in JBOD mode. To enable JBOD mode you need to use MegaCLI commands. This option is not shown in the GUI/CIMC..

Please note: Once you enable JBOD mode – it cannot be reverted back to the default RAID mode setting.

See some examples at https://www.broadcom.com/support/knowledgebase/1211161498596/megacli-cheat-sheet--live-examples

MegaCli -AdpSetProp -EnableJBOD 1 -a0,

Make JBOD

MegaCli -PDMakeJBOD -PhysDrv[E0:S0,E1:S1,...] -aN|-a0,1,2|-aALL

You need to run encinfo (see above identify enclosure) and do not type E, only 252:4

Where 252 is Enclosure and 4 is Slot

Live example:

Megacli -pdmakejbod -physdrv [252:4] –a0

In regards to your spectre/meltdown performance question, "most" environments will not see a difference.  Usually would take a bench marking tool to see granular counters.

Kirk...

[PetterOne]

I have been playing around with JBOD in CIMC. Is that not the same thing? (I would very much like to know if it's not the same thing...) That feature can easily be turned off:

JBOD in CIMC

Even though I have set physical drives to JBOD I haven't been able to get the disks visible during CentOS 8 install.

During BIOS post I have successfully made drives that are handled by BIOS:

JBOD handled by BIOSVirtual Drive handled by BIOS

So I'm starting to think that I need the old RAID drivers to make use of these disks in CentOS 8. In that case I will install CentOS 8 with driver update disks (DUD). For anyone else interested in this solution; you can start here:

https://elrepoproject.blogspot.com/2019/08/rhel-80-and-support-for-removed-adapters.html

[Kirk J]

Once you enabled jbod mode,,, do you go to any of the disks, and individually change from Unconfigured good, to Jbod?

Thanks,

Kirk...

[PetterOne]

Yes

Edit: And set one disk to bootable.

[PetterOne · Accepted solution]

For posterity: 

I ended up using a DUD:
https://elrepo.org/linux/dud/el8/x86_64/

You can identify the kmod packages here:

http://elrepo.org/tiki/DeviceIDs