Enabling WriteCache on LSI RAID adapters

LSI Logic SAS2008 adapters still supported in ESXi 6.7. This cards are cheap and still used in many home labs like mine. For ESXi is available management utility sas2ircu (Broadcom/Raid/SAS 9217-8I/Downloads Management Software and Tools).

When you create logical volume in Raid BIOS or using sas2ircu, device write cache is disabled by default. There is no option to enable it in BIOS or using sas2ircu utility. For ESXi there is very old KB 2001946 how to enable cache with lsiutil, but attached lsiutil does not work any more in recent ESXi (segfault). It seems newer lsiutil for linux can be used in ESXi too. It can be found here http://ftp.icm.edu.pl/packages/LSI/sw/lsiutil-1.71/lsiutil.x86_64

This seems to be static version working on ESXi:

[root@esxi:~] cd /tmp
[root@esxi:/tmp] wget http://owncloud.iwik.org/data/iwik/files/Public/lsiutil.x86_64
Connecting to owncloud.iwik.org (192.168.0.5:80)
lsiutil.x86_64       100% |******************************************************************************************************************************************************************|   489k  0:00:00 ETA
[root@esxi:/tmp] chmod 755 ./lsiutil.x86_64
[root@esxi:/tmp] ./lsiutil.x86_64

LSI Logic MPT Configuration Utility, Version 1.71, Sep 18, 2013

1 MPT Port found

     Port Name         Chip Vendor/Type/Rev    MPT Rev  Firmware Rev  IOC
 1.  ioc0              LSI Logic SAS2008 B2      200      14000700     0

Now we can use steps from vmware KB and enter commands

1
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Write caching:  [0=Disabled, 1=Enabled, 2=MemberControlled default is 0]

Enter 1 and

Volume 0 Settings:  write caching enabled, auto configure hot swap enabled

Local mirrors:

https://nextcloud.iwik.org/s/SAS2IRCU_P20
LSI_Util