5405z + 24bay (SAS-846-EL1) SM BackPlane Weird issue

[james23]

hi,

i have a pretty strange issue that ive come across in my remake of my home server. My chassis is a SuperMicro CSE-846E1-R900B with a x8dt3-f MB and 2x L5640 xeons. My issue is with the backplane / expander which is a supermicro SAS-846-EL1 (it takes in 1x sas-8087 and feeds 24 sata/sas hotswap bays).

The card driving that backplane is a Adaptec 5405z. My drives are 8x 3tb Hitachi HUAa723030ala640 and i also have 10x 1tb hitachi HDE721010sla330 that go to another server but that i can use to test with as they are brand new.

I mainly want to run the 8x HUA 3tb drives in the 24 bays (meaning only those drives will be in 8 of the 24 bays, the other drives i will attach in other ways, my thinking is only use HUA 3tb drives on the 24 port backplane as i know they can be finky when you start mixing different brands and different SATA speeds, so i'll use the other 16 bays for future expansion as I buy more 3tb HUAs over time).

(im still at the build / stress test / test phase of this build so there is no important data on this server yet, just trying to finalize the config)

My issue is that for some reason, if i shutdown the server, and then start it up only a few of my drives will show up by the time i see the adaptec BIOS screen. this can cause issues as if some of the drives that dont show up are ones in a RAID it causes the raid to be marked as faulty/rebuild. however, when this is happening, if i then go into adaptec BIOS and do a drive re-scan, they will all show up.

Now if i simply restart my server (versus shut it down, then hit power button in scenario above) no issue, and all drives show up in adaptec "post" screen.

now the weird part: since my server has IPMI, if i shut down the server, and pull the plug, (thus ALSO powering down the IPMI card) when i then power up, Supermicro's normal protocol is to do a reboot AT THE END OF POST the IPMI card can fully initialize. in this scenario i again get all drives to show up, and thus no issues.

so this "not all drives showing up" issue only happens if the server is powered on from a shutdown then power on via pressing the physical power button.

I know i may not be explaining this well but its hard to explain. I thought this issue sounded exactly like the 5405 or backplane was slowly spinning up the drives and thus they are not all spun up before hitting the 5405 card, however this is not the case as ive tried adding a delay to the POST screen (by enabling extended memory test, thus increasing the time spent on POST so that the drives could have more time to spin up before hitting the adaptec 5405 bios screen, but to no avail...

its worth noting that when i hook the 24bay backplane up to a LSI 8888elp card, all drives show up, every time, regardless of the type of reboot/shutdown i preform. its only on the adaptec 5405 that this happens, and ONLY when i do a shutdown then power up. (not when i do a shutdown, pull plug, thus requiring IPMI to loose power and cause a " mini reboot right after POST screen).

any ideas? Both my 3tb drives, and my exact 24bay Backplane are on the adaptec 5405 compatibility sheet. and im also using the latest BIOS on 5405 as well.

btw the expander chip in the sas846e1 is a LSI SAX36 A.1 which also lists 5405 raid card on its compatibility list.

Ive also tried hooking up a adaptec 5805 card to the backplane and the result is the exact same.

does anyone have this same setup? (5405 or 5805 AND Supermicro sas846e1 backplane)

thanks

 

[PigLover]

Your Adaptec card may not be waiting long enough for the drives to spin up. Many raid cards have a confuligurable delay. See if making it longer helps.

 

[james23]

Hi, yes, that was my first thought, but as there is no way in the SM bios to add a delay, the best i could find is doing what i tried and thats setting the POST memory test to enable (default is disable) which adds about 20 seconds. Im pretty sure i can eliminate drive spin up time as that 20 seconds did no add nor subtract 1 drive from the situation when i repeat it.

Im also looking for someone who has the same setup or is using the same backplane to see how their experiences are with it.

EDIT: also there is no set-able delay in the adaptec storage manager or in the card's bios (i even tore through every page of the manual and KBs looking for that
thanks

 

[ruffy91]

Three scenarios:
-Staggered drive spin-up has a problem with so many drives: try with the newest firmware, there should be a configuration option for staggered spin-up.
-Your backplane and controller try to use P11 of the SATA power connector to spin up the drives, but the hitachi drives don't support this feature according to the manual ->
you can try to set/unset the jumper on the back of the HDD to enable/disable "Power-up In Standby/PUIS" (theres no mention in the manual if this is active low or active high) or activate/deactivate the PUIS feature with the "Hitachi Feature Tool" but as I read this won't help as the controller will reset this bit if it tries to do staggered spin-up with P11.
-SAS 3GB/s Backplane does not support 6GB/s drives: Usage of 12Gb/s or 6Gb/s devices with backplanes rated at lower transfer rates Try to get a new firmware for your backplane.