I am using an IBM M1015 card in depot. It is an SAS2008-based card, and normally comes with RAID firmware ("IR"). In order to make best use of it with ZFS, it should be reflashed with "IT" (Initiator Target) software. This provides simple pass-through, which is best for ZFS. The IBM M1015 can connect 8 SATA drives at 6.0 Gb/s.

The simple reason to use an IBM M1015 for FreeBSD 9.1 with ZFS: they can be had at very low cost on eBay. I got mine for $79. However, be prepared for some work to get IT software loaded, unless you can find a seller who will preload it for you.

I created a bootable FreeDOS USB stick and placed the LSI "IT" firmware on it, along with LSI's software for reflashing. I also created a disk image from the USB stick when I was done, using Disk Utility on my hackintosh. The disk image can be used to recreate the bootable FreeDOS USB stick as needed. Since the disk image already includes the LSI firmware and software, it has everything needed to flash the IBM M1015 with "IT" software.

Once booted from the bootable FreeDOS USB memory stick, the process of flashing the IBM M1015 is simple:

• Save the original serial boot rom (sbr):

        megarec -readsbr 0 backup.sbr
      

• Write new sbr to the M1015:

        megarec -writesbr 0 empty.bin
      

• Erase the controller flash memory (yes, this is safe):

        megarec -cleanflash 0
      

• Reflash IT firmware:

        sas2flsh -o -f 2108it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
      

• Program the SAS address. The address is on a sticker on the card, and is of the form '500605b X-XXXX-XXXX' where the X's are different for each card. Removing the space and hyphens, and replacing the X's with the appropriate digits:

        sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605bXXXXXXXXX
      

  My card's address was 500605b 0-0271-3090, so I used:

        sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605b002713090
      

That's it. FreeBSD 9.1 should recognize the card and attach via the mps driver at boot:

mps0:  port 0xe000-0xe0ff mem 0xf7dc0000-0xf7dc3fff,0xf7d80000-0xf7dbffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
mps0: Firmware: 09.00.00.00, Driver: 14.00.00.01-fbsd
mps0: IOCCapabilities: 1285c