Re: IRQ issues with multiple SiI3114's on Kernel 3.2

[Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com>]

On 7/29/2012 2:00 PM, Stirling Westrup wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 5:24 AM, Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:
>> On 7/28/2012 6:41 PM, Stirling Westrup wrote:
>>
>>> Okay, it looks like its a known hardware chipset problem, and was
>>> first reported 6-months ago.
>>>
>>> It affects all PCI cards in Asus Sandy-Bridge Motherboards. No known
>>> fix as of yet.
>>>
>>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/1/30/216
>>
>> At least our discussion got you looking in multiple directions, one of
>> which led you to this information.
>>
>> Given the problem is related to legacy PCI INTx sharing/routing, whether
>> on the PCI or PCIe bus, I'd recommend you step up to a high quality PCIe
>> x8 SAS/SATA HBA, such as the LSI 9211-8i PCIe x8, which supports MSI-X
>> and should instantly solve your problem.
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118112
>>
>> You'll need two breakout cables:
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116098
>>
>> This solution will set you back almost $300 USD.  I just did some
>> research on the Syba 4 port SiI 3124 PCIe x1 card.  The SiI 3124 is a
>> native PCI/X chip, thus the board uses a PCI-X to PCIe bridge chip which
>> hides under the large heatsink.  Thus this card will not work, as it
>> uses legacy PCI interrupts:
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124027
>>
>> I also looked at the Syba and Adaptec Marvell PCIe x1 SATAII 4 port
>> cards.  While the Marvell chip is native PCIe I'm unable to confirm it
>> supports MSI/X.  And given these cards run $80-90, that's $160-180 for
>> two of them.  The LSI above is pretty much guaranteed to work for ~$100
>> more.  What's your reputation with your client worth?
>>
>> Speaking of which, don't even look at the $110 8 port Supermicro
>> SAS/SATA controller.  It uses the Marvell SAS chip.  Although the chip
>> itself is fine and works with Windows, the Linux driver *will* eat your
>> data, all the way up to kernel 3.4.  I've personally rectified this
>> situation for a half dozen users who bought this SM SAS board on price
>> alone.  I converted them all to LSI HBAs and no problems since.  The
>> solution cost them 2-3x as much but they're all happy because it simply
>> works reliably, and fast.
>>
>> Or you can start swapping $150+ motherboards until you find one that
>> works with those $20 Syba 3114 cards.  But then you need to ask
>> yourself, how much is your time worth.  You could easily burn 20 or more
>> hours going that route.
>>
>> Get the LSI and be done with this.
>>
> 
> The above sounds like excellent advice, and you have saved me several
> hours of perusing catalogs trying to figure out what to buy to replace
> the two SiI cards. I greatly appreciate the help, and I have sent off
> an order to NewEgg for the LSI board and cables.

Always glad to help others with hardware.  The 9211-8i comes with RAID
firmware and supports RAID0/1/1E/10.  This is not fakeraid, but it's not
really 'true' RAID either as the HBA has no cache, thus it can't sort
writes.  Which is why most use this card in JBOD mode as a standard
SAS/SATA HBA with Linux md/RAID.  I also recommend using the deadline
elevator, if you're not already.

-- 
Stan