Update firmware of AOC-USAS2LP-H8iR (smc2108) – LSI 2108 MegaRAID Hardware Controller

This card

AOC-USAS2LP-H8iR

is really old (probably 7-9 years), but still it works, so you can check if you are with the latest and greatest firmware. Hope the latest fixes more things than it beaks. To flash the firmware you need Megaraid cli and the firmware file, the two files you check in the sub-directories of https://www.supermicro.com/wftp/driver/SAS/LSI/2108/Firmware/ They are still there despite this product is discontinued. In this URL these are the latest, tested and verified versions by Supermicro so it is advisable to download them from this link or at least use the same versions if they are not available (in the future, now they are still available).
As you know LSI (they bought 3ware RAID in 2009) was bought by Avago (2013), then Avago bought Broadcom (2016 and renamed itself to Broadcom, 2018), so not so easy to find stuff for such old hardware (which still works). So this old MegaRAID controller is better managed by MegaCli despite you can do it with “storcli”, which is a modification of the tw_cli utility of 3ware RAID.

STEP 1) Download the Megacli and the firmware

Here is what you have:

www.supermicro.com - /wftp/driver/SAS/LSI/2108/Firmware/MegaCLI/8.05.06/

[To Parent Directory]

 5/24/2017 10:16 AM          805 CheckSum.txt
 5/24/2017 10:16 AM      1820757 MegaCli_FreeBSD.zip
 5/24/2017 10:16 AM      1507971 MegaCli_Linux.zip
 5/24/2017 10:16 AM      5166240 MegaCli_solaris.zip
 5/24/2017 10:16 AM      1839047 MegaCli_Sparc.zip
 5/24/2017 10:16 AM      1239932 MegaCli_Vmware.zip
 5/24/2017 10:16 AM       742622 MegaCli_Vmware_MN.zip
 5/24/2017 10:16 AM      1432552 MegaCli_Windows.zip
 5/24/2017 10:16 AM      5859275 MegaCliKL_Linux.zip

Our server uses CentOS 7 so we need MegaCli_Linux.zip
The zip file MegaCli_Linuz.zip contains only one file MegaCli-8.05.06-1.noarch.rpm from August 2012. Here is the rpm information:

Name        : MegaCli
Version     : 8.05.06
Release     : 1
Architecture: noarch
Install Date: (not installed)
Group       : RAID
Size        : 5655020
License     : LSI Logic Corporation
Signature   : (none)
Source RPM  : MegaCli-8.05.06-1.src.rpm
Build Date  : 28.08.2012 (Tue) 17,34,13 EEST
Build Host  : dhcp-135-24-228-175.lsi.com
Relocations : (not relocatable)
Packager    : Bhavna Patel
Vendor      : LSI Logic Corporation
URL         : http://www.lsil.com
Summary     : MegaCli SAS RAID Management Utility.
Description :
MegaCli is used to manage SAS RAID controllers.

The you must download the firmware. This is the last one (at the moment of the writings) https://www.supermicro.com/wftp/driver/SAS/LSI/2108/Firmware/2.130.403-4660/
Here is what it contains now:

www.supermicro.com - /wftp/driver/SAS/LSI/2108/Firmware/2.130.403-4660/

[To Parent Directory]

 5/24/2017 10:14 AM          522 CheckSum.txt
 5/24/2017 10:14 AM       221307 LSI SAS2108 Controller Firmware Update Procedure-MegaCLI&MSM.pdf
 5/24/2017 10:14 AM       755512 MegaCli.exe
 5/24/2017 10:14 AM          622 ReleaseNote.txt
 5/24/2017 10:14 AM          428 smc2108.bat
 5/24/2017 10:14 AM      4980736 smc2108.rom

You need only the ROM file: https://www.supermicro.com/wftp/driver/SAS/LSI/2108/Firmware/2.130.403-4660/smc2108.rom Unfortunately when you open the url it redirects to Supermicro index_home.cfm home page so probably this file is deleted. Google found it in ftp://ftp.supermicro.nl/driver/SAS/LSI/2108/Firmware/2.130.403-4660/smc2108.rom It seems a Supermicro domain (Netherlands mirror) so you can use it (you can see the md5 sum of our file, which was flashed successfully).

STEP 2) Install the MegaRaid cli utility

[root@srv0 ~]# unzip MegaCli_Linux.zip 
Archive:  MegaCli_Linux.zip
  inflating: MegaCli_Linux/MegaCli-8.05.06-1.noarch.rpm
[root@srv0 ~]# yum install -y MegaCli_Linux/MegaCli-8.05.06-1.noarch.rpm
[root@srv0 ~]# md5sum smc2108.rom 
0e2bfe24a74d8b14f33d3288efd6355a  smc2108.rom

STEP 2) Flash the new firmware

We’ve done it on a live system and then restarted because changes took effect only after boot of the controller (so reboot your server). The you should go to the BIOS of the controller (WebBIOS) by pressing CTRL+H during starting up the server (when it reports the disks) and load the controller’s default settings to be sure everything is OK with the settings and then if you had made changes to the settings you can make them again.

When you execute the command there is no progress and your console will FREEZE. DO NOT PANIC it is normal after 1-2 minutes maximum it will report “Flash Completed.” and you can reboot!

[root@srv0 ~]# /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64 -adpFwFlash -f smc2108.rom -a0
                                     
Adapter 0: Supermicro SMC2108
Vendor ID: 0x1000, Device ID: 0x0079

Package version on the controller: 12.12.0-0045 
Package version of the image file: 12.15.0-0239 
Download Completed.     
Flashing image to adapter...


Adapter 0: Flash Completed.
Please reboot the system for the changes to take effect

Exit Code: 0x00
[root@srv0 ~]#

We changed from 12.12.0-0045 to 12.15.0-0239 and we experienced zero problems! As you can see our firmware was pretty old and several versions behind the one (the latest) we flashed.
Here is the firmware information after flashing version 12.15.0-0239:

Adapter #0

==============================================================================
                    Versions
                ================
Product Name    : LSI 2108 MegaRAID
Serial No       : 
FW Package Build: 12.15.0-0239

                    Mfg. Data
                ================
Mfg. Date       : 00/00/00
Rework Date     : 00/00/00
Revision No     : 
Battery FRU     : N/A

                Image Versions in Flash:
                ================
FW Version         : 2.130.403-4660
BIOS Version       : 3.30.02.2_4.16.08.00_0x06060A05
Preboot CLI Version: 04.04-020:#%00009
WebBIOS Version    : 6.0-54-e_50-Rel
NVDATA Version     : 2.09.03-0058
Boot Block Version : 2.02.00.00-0000
BOOT Version       : 09.250.01.219

                Pending Images in Flash
                ================
None

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