LSI SATA MegaRaid & CentOS 7 Build 1511

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Dear All;

I want to install CentOS 7 latest build on NEC Server 5800/120b-2.

The installation wizard fails to detect the storage connected to LSI SATA MegaRaid PCI.

CentOS 5/6 were working fine with this H/W configuration but not the case with CentOS 7.

Please; advise.

Fawzy Ibrahim Redhat Certified Engineer

31 thoughts on - LSI SATA MegaRaid & CentOS 7 Build 1511

  • which megaraid card? they’ve made quite a lot. lspci will list the card type…

    linux will only see storage on a megaraid thats configured as a logical unit (eg, put in a raid). this can be done via megacli, or via the BIOS
    firmware.

  • A number of older storage and network drivers were purged from the kernel with the release of el7. If this hardware is old enough, it’s entirely possible that it’s no longer supported out of the box.

  • John R Pierce wrote:
    Right. Have you configured the server, via the firmware, to present the drives or RAID as a logical drive? Some of those controllers won’t let the server find the drive if you haven’t done that.

    mark

  • This is particularly likely if this same hardware has been used with
    “CentOS 5/6” as reported in the original message.

  • Hi;

    LSI SATA MEGARAID 95Q9 as I remember.

    I have configured it through the firmware and I have created RAID-1 VD.

    But when I start the CentOS 7 installation; I can not find any disk !!

  • afaik, the megaraid cards are mostly all SAS, which support SATA drives, except very old ones were SCSI.

    Ok, I do see they had a series of MegaRAID SATA 150-xx and 300-xx cards, these were 64 bit PCI or PCI-X cards.

    95Q9 does not appear to be a valid card number, 9240, 9260, 9280 are some pci-express SAS MegaRaid cards….

    if you want help, please don’t guess what you have, figure out what it actually is. the output of `lspci -nn` will identify all boards in your system, for instance…

    # lspci -nn
    00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 5520 I/O Hub to ESI Port
    [8086:3406] (rev 13)
    00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI
    Express Root Port 1 [8086:3408] (rev 13)
    00:03.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI
    Express Root Port 3 [8086:340a] (rev 13)
    00:07.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI
    Express Root Port 7 [8086:340e] (rev 13)
    00:09.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 9 [8086:3410] (rev 13)
    00:14.0 PIC [0800]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub System Management Registers [8086:342e] (rev 13)
    00:14.1 PIC [0800]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub GPIO
    and Scratch Pad Registers [8086:3422] (rev 13)
    00:14.2 PIC [0800]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Control Status and RAS Registers [8086:3423] (rev 13)
    00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family)
    USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:3a37]
    00:1a.7 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family)
    USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:3a3c]
    00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI
    Express Root Port 1 [8086:3a40]
    00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI
    Express Root Port 5 [8086:3a48]
    00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family)
    USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:3a34]
    00:1d.1 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family)
    USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:3a35]
    00:1d.2 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family)
    USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:3a36]
    00:1d.7 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family)
    USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:3a3a]
    00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge
    [8086:244e] (rev 90)
    00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC
    Interface Controller [8086:3a16]
    00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family)
    SATA AHCI Controller [8086:3a22]
    02:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G200e [Pilot] ServerEngines (SEP1) [102b:0522] (rev 02)
    06:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller [0107]: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon] [1000:0072] (rev 03)
    07:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82576 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10c9] (rev 01)
    07:00.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82576 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10c9] (rev 01)

    (my storage controller there is the device 06:00.0, a LSI Logic SAS2008
    chip, which is actually on a LSI 9211-8i card).

  • You need to better identify the card and determine if it’s one of the drivers that was dropped. If so, you’d have to build a driver disk and maintain your own driver builds for each kernel update. It’s not “no hope” exactly, but it would probably take a moderate amount of experience to keep running.

    I’d be wary of hardware used as far back as CentOS 5, but I don’t see driver changes between RHEL 6 and 7 that I’d expect to impact an LSI
    Megaraid card. The old “megaraid” driver was dropped in RHEL 6, leaving just the megaraid_sas driver in 6 and 7. If you run release 6 on that system (boot a live image), look at “lspci” and “lsmod” output. The latter will tell you what drivers are in use, and should be useful to tracking down support in release 7.

  • # lspci -nn
    00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 5520 I/O Hub to ESI Port [8086:3406] (rev 22)
    00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 1 [8086:3408] (rev 22)
    00:03.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 3 [8086:340a] (rev 22)
    00:05.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5520/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 5 [8086:340c] (rev 22)
    00:07.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 7 [8086:340e] (rev 22)
    00:09.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 9 [8086:3410] (rev 22)
    00:0a.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 10 [8086:3411] (rev 22)
    00:13.0 PIC [0800]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub I/OxAPIC Interrupt Controller [8086:342d] (rev 22)
    00:14.0 PIC [0800]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub System Management Registers [8086:342e] (rev 22)
    00:14.1 PIC [0800]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub GPIO and Scratch Pad Registers [8086:3422] (rev 22)
    00:14.2 PIC [0800]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Control Status and RAS Registers [8086:3423] (rev 22)
    00:14.3 PIC [0800]: Intel Corporation 7500/5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Throttle Registers [8086:3438] (rev 22)
    00:16.0 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Chipset QuickData Technology Device [8086:3430] (rev 22)
    00:16.1 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Chipset QuickData Technology Device [8086:3431] (rev 22)
    00:16.2 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Chipset QuickData Technology Device [8086:3432] (rev 22)
    00:16.3 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Chipset QuickData Technology Device [8086:3433] (rev 22)
    00:16.4 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Chipset QuickData Technology Device [8086:3429] (rev 22)
    00:16.5 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Chipset QuickData Technology Device [8086:342a] (rev 22)
    00:16.6 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Chipset QuickData Technology Device [8086:342b] (rev 22)
    00:16.7 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Chipset QuickData Technology Device [8086:342c] (rev 22)
    00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:3a37]
    00:1a.1 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:3a38]
    00:1a.7 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:3a3c]
    00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 1 [8086:3a40]
    00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 5 [8086:3a48]
    00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:3a34]
    00:1d.1 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:3a35]
    00:1d.2 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:3a36]
    00:1d.7 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:3a3a]
    00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge [8086:244e] (rev 90)
    00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface Controller [8086:3a16]
    00:1f.2 RAID bus controller [0104]: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) SATA RAID Controller [8086:3a25]
    00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller [8086:3a30]
    01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82576 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10c9] (rev 01)
    01:00.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82576 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10c9] (rev 01)
    09:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G200e [Pilot] ServerEngines (SEP1) [102b:0522] (rev 02)
    ff:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers [8086:2c70] (rev 02)
    ff:00.1 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder [8086:2d81] (rev 02)
    ff:02.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series QPI Link 0 [8086:2d90] (rev 02)
    ff:02.1 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series QPI Physical 0 [8086:2d91] (rev 02)
    ff:02.2 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Mirror Port Link 0 [8086:2d92] (rev 02)
    ff:02.3 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Mirror Port Link 1 [8086:2d93] (rev 02)
    ff:02.4 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series QPI Link 1 [8086:2d94] (rev 02)
    ff:02.5 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series QPI Physical 1 [8086:2d95] (rev 02)
    ff:03.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Registers [8086:2d98] (rev 02)
    ff:03.1 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Target Address Decoder [8086:2d99] (rev 02)
    ff:03.2 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller RAS Registers [8086:2d9a] (rev 02)
    ff:03.4 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Test Registers [8086:2d9c] (rev 02)
    ff:04.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Control [8086:2da0] (rev 02)
    ff:04.1 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Address [8086:2da1] (rev 02)
    ff:04.2 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Rank [8086:2da2] (rev 02)
    ff:04.3 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Thermal Control [8086:2da3] (rev 02)
    ff:05.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Control [8086:2da8] (rev 02)
    ff:05.1 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Address [8086:2da9] (rev 02)
    ff:05.2 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Rank [8086:2daa] (rev 02)
    ff:05.3 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Thermal Control [8086:2dab] (rev 02)
    ff:06.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 2 Control [8086:2db0] (rev 02)
    ff:06.1 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 2 Address [8086:2db1] (rev 02)
    ff:06.2 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 2 Rank [8086:2db2] (rev 02)
    ff:06.3 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon 5600 Series Integrated Memory Controller Channel 2 Thermal Control [8086:2db3] (rev 02)

  • I don’t see any LSI hardware in there, at all. Drivers or no, it should show up. Are you sure it’s plugged in? Do you see the LSI firmware on the monitor during the boot process?

  • I don’t see anything on there except the Intel chipsets, a Matrox graphics chip, and the Intel ICH10 south bridge in fake-raid mode, no LSI devices at all.

  • It’s fakeRAID but I do not know why there’s no LSI cards in lspci output !!

    To manage the disks; I have to use the LSI Sata Megaraid fireware; so is there any hope to install CentOS 7 on this H/W?

    I have three servers from this model and I was planning to use them as test environment for me.

    Is there any way to rebuild kernel drivers or by pass boot parameter dmraid=yes while installing CentOS 7?

  • Fawzy Ibrhim wrote:
    In the past, the fakeRAID that I’ve run into were Intel chips, not an LSI
    card.

    mark

  • As far as I know, LSI doesn’t make any fakeraid products. Does the firmware say “LSI” or “MegaRAID” somewhere?

  • It’s fakeRAID but I do not know why there’s no LSI cards in lspci output !!

    To manage the disks; I have to use the LSI Sata Megaraid fireware; so is there any hope to install CentOS 7 on this H/W?

    I have three servers from this model and I was planning to use them as test environment for me.

    Is there any way to rebuild kernel drivers or by pass boot parameter dmraid=yes while installing CentOS 7?

  • I have opened the case of the server and it’s LSI card with FakeRaid !!

    What I have to do now as lspci shows it as intel cards?

  • Fawzy Ibrhim wrote:

    If you’re responding to my comment, you seem to have misunderstood me. The only servers I had that offered fakeRAID were Intel motherboards, with the chips for fakeRAID on the motherboard, not a separate card. Are you *sure*
    lspci is not finding the card? Perhaps try lspci | grep -v Intel

    mark

  • > I have double checked again and yes it’s Fakeraid from LSI.
    > Also it’s not shown in “lspci -nn” output.

    In your original message, you indicated that this was a PCI card, but it looks like this is just a firmware component of your motherboard.

    I think you should assume that this firmware is unsupported. Set your SATA mode to AHCI in the BIOS, and then use “dmraid -r -E” to remove the RAID metadata from those disks:
    https://bugs.CentOS.org/view.php?id

  • What about the output of “lsmod” and “modinfo dmraid”?

    Please reply on the list, rather than to my address directly, and if you could, please avoid sending HTML messages. Your font is so small I can barely read it.

  • I guess module ioatdma is missing in CentOS 7:-

    00:16.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 Chipset QuickData Technology Device (rev 22)
        Subsystem: NEC Corporation Device 8372
        Kernel driver in use: ioatdma
        Kernel modules: ioatdma

    # lsmod Module                  Size  Used by autofs4                27000  3
    sunrpc                267620  1
    8021q                  20362  0
    garp                    7152  1 8021q stp                     2218  1 garp llc                     5418  2 garp,stp cpufreq_ondemand       10544  8
    acpi_cpufreq            7763  1
    freq_table              4936  2 cpufreq_ondemand,acpi_cpufreq mperf                   1557  1 acpi_cpufreq ipt_REJECT              2351  2
    nf_conntrack_ipv4       9186  2
    nf_defrag_ipv4          1483  1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
    iptable_filter          2793  1
    ip_tables              17831  1 iptable_filter ip6t_REJECT             4340  2
    nf_conntrack_ipv6       7985  2
    nf_defrag_ipv6         26468  1 nf_conntrack_ipv6
    xt_state                1492  4
    nf_conntrack           79537  3 nf_conntrack_ipv4,nf_conntrack_ipv6,xt_state ip6table_filter         2889  1
    ip6_tables             18732  1 ip6table_filter ipv6                  336282  77 ip6t_REJECT,nf_conntrack_ipv6,nf_defrag_ipv6
    uinput                  8120  0
    microcode             112205  0
    power_meter             9009  0
    acpi_ipmi               3745  1 power_meter ipmi_si                46440  2 acpi_ipmi ipmi_msghandler        40044  2 acpi_ipmi,ipmi_si iTCO_wdt                7278  0
    iTCO_vendor_support     3056  1 iTCO_wdt sg                     29318  0
    i2c_i801               12881  0
    lpc_ich                13571  0
    mfd_core                1927  1 lpc_ich ioatdma                53955  24
    i7core_edac            17948  0
    edac_core              46645  3 i7core_edac igb                   191907  0
    dca                     7101  2 ioatdma,igb i2c_algo_bit            5711  1 igb i2c_core               29132  3 i2c_i801,igb,i2c_algo_bit ptp                     9614  1 igb pps_core               10690  1 ptp ext4                  379655  4
    jbd2                   93252  1 ext4
    mbcache                 8193  1 ext4
    sr_mod                 15049  0
    cdrom                  39085  1 sr_mod sd_mod                 37158  2
    crc_t10dif              1209  1 sd_mod ahci                   43154  2
    dm_mirror              14864  1
    dm_region_hash         12085  1 dm_mirror dm_log                  9930  3 dm_mirror,dm_region_hash dm_mod                102467  22 dm_mirror,dm_log

    # modinfo dmraid ERROR: modinfo: could not find module dmraid

  • Again, please stop mailing me directly.

    I don’t think so. I see that module on the host I checked. None of the missing modules appear to be related to RAID: autofs4, cpufreq_ondemand, freq_table, mperf, ipv6, microcode, power_meter.

    Can you post the output of “dmesg” on your CentOS 6 system here:
    https://paste.fedoraproject.org/

  • Yes, that’s the link I sent to you on the 13th. I don’t see any resolution to the problem of using fakeraid on CentOS 7 in lists or forums. All the instances I can find end in users clearing the fakeraid metadata and using Linux software RAID.

  • huh. i’ve never seen anyone using the lsi megaraid firmware with intel SATA ports, so thats two things weird about NEC, kinda glad I
    don’t ever see those.

  • Am 17.08.2016 um 20:22 schrieb John R Pierce:

    I have been working as a NEC partner and reseller and know very well what NEC implements in their Express 5800 server line.

    They do not ship anything from LSI which is fake RAID. The onboard SATA
    controllers are Intel chip technology and can work with Windows drivers in fake RAID mode. Not with Linux.

    On the other hand when real RAID is wanted NEC sells LSI PCI
    controllers. In the model R120b-2 it had been the LSI MegaRAID SAS
    9264-8i. That controller has a BIOS where you define all the common parameters which apply to a true RAID controller.

    What NEC offers can easily be seen in the Configuration Guide for the named server model:

    http://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/express/rack/r120b-2/collateral/R120b-2_CG.pdf

    NEC did some Linux compatibility testing:

    http://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/express/linux/r120b-2/EN_R120b-2_CentOS64.html

    http://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/express/linux/r120b-2/EN_R120b-2_RH64.html

    It is pretty simple: if lspci does not print out a PCI RAID controller card then there is simply no real RAID functionality and no LSI
    component in that server model.

    NEC engineers very solid and produces very reliable server hardware. Many components are industry standard, as the Intel chipsets and processors, OEM LSI RAID controller cards, Emulex FiberChannel HBAs, … NEC does not do any strange modification like implementing LSI firmware into Intel chips. Though their motherboards are their own design and are manufactured in Japan.

    Regards

    Alexander

  • Fawny’s screen shot of the BIOS showed “LSI MegaRAID Software RAID BIOS’
    finding “LSI SATA RAID” on PCI device 00:1F, and his lspci output identifies 00:1F as the intel ICH SATA in fake-raid mode, and no LSI
    devices at all. This is what I based my statements on.

  • Dear Alexander;
    Thanks for your reply but what you are saying could apply in Europe and USA but not in Middle East. I’m using these servers for around 5 years now and I know it’s NEC with FakeRaid ; please check these photos https://drive.google.com/open?id zqgoXi9IUMid3pNOXRZOHZuMkU
    I totally agree with John; NEC sold these servers with fakeraid from LSI as I used to login to LSI Firmware to manage the RAID disks. But when I install CentOS 5.X/6.X 64bit; I can see the disks as standalone disks as well as dmraid devices.

    # dmraid -rD
    /dev/sda: ddf1, “.ddf1_disks”, GROUP, ok, 974608384 sectors, data@ 0
    /dev/sdb: ddf1, “.ddf1_disks”, GROUP, ok, 974608384 sectors, data@ 0
    It looks like kernel issue more than CentOS 7 issue as I faced the same issue while installing Debian 8
    Please; check this link:-
    https://bugs.CentOS.org/view.php?id

  • The NEC compatibility page at http://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/express/linux/CentOS.html indicates that the R120b2 is not certified for CentOS 7. CentOS 5 and 6, yes, but not 7. As there are other servers listed that are certified for CentOS
    7, it isn’t that NEC is ignoring CentOS 7; it may just simply not work properly on the R120b2. You’ll need to file a bug report with Red Hat, as CentOS is just going to repackage the source Red Hat ships.

    There have been ‘zero port’ RAID cards in the past where the RAID
    controller uses motherboard ports with hardware RAID; I have an Adaptec ASR-2000S here that is for a particular SuperMicro motherboard that uses the Adaptec SCSI controllers on the motherboard for the disk ports
    (dedicated PCI-X slot for it; performance was quite good and comparable to the RAID controllers with ports on the controller). I don’t know if this would be the case with the R120b2 or not. But it may be that the particular MegaRAID controller you have is simply not recognized (maybe even shut down after boot) by the CentOS 7 kernel.

    For CentOS 7 it would seem that you need to remove the RAID card and clear the disks that are on the motherboard ports and install with CentOS 7 software RAID.

    I know that some older LSI MegaRAID SAS cards are supported; I have several Dell PowerEdge 1950’s running CentOS 7 (yes, I’m aware of the battery issues). The relevant section of the lspci output on them:

    01:00.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 1078
    (rev 04)

    Can you post the output of lspci from CentOS 6, please? While you might not think that lspci would show different outputs from different version of the distribution, you might be surprised.