Flash LSI 2308 to IT-mode on a SuperMicro X10SL7-F mainboard

For a new SSD-only Ceph deployment I got my hands on a couple of SuperMicro SYS-1018D-73MTF 1U server with 8 Intel SSDs.

Great machines, but by default SuperMicro ships them with the IR (Integrated RAID) firmware and I wanted to use the IT (JBOD) firmware.

The X10SL7 mainboard has a UEFI bios, so flashing the controller was rather easy.

First, download the latest firmware for the LSI 2308 controller from SuperMicro. At this moment it is the PH19-IT firmware.

Now we have to create a small disk image with a FAT32 filesystem to use as a virtual drive for the IPMI.

I run Ubuntu on my desktops and laptops, so this is how I created that small disk image:

NOTE: You can generate the ISO with the steps below, or download it directly.

mkfs.msdos -C ipmi.iso 2880
sudo mkdir /media/ipmi/
sudo mount -o loop ipmi.iso /media/ipmi/
wget ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/Driver/SAS/LSI/2308/Firmware/IT/PH19-IT.zip
sudo unzip PH19-IT.zip UEFI/* -d /media/ipmi/
sudo umount /media/ipmi/

Now open your IPMI and attach ipmi.iso to your server.

Reboot the machine and hit the F11 key to open a boot menu and start the build in UEFI shell.

When in the UEFI shell enter these commands:

fs0:
cd UEFI
SMC2308T.NSH

At some point it will ask for the 9 remaining digits of the SAS address. Simply enter 000000000 (9 zeros) and you’re fine.

Reboot the system and the controller should now be in IT mode