Drive detection error

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BradTheGeek

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Jun 15, 2017
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Hi. Having a strange drive detection issue. First I will give you my config and a little history, then the specific issue. But basicall I hace 2 1T drives and 6 6T drives and the HBA is detecting 8 6T drives (and not the existing config, that I could import if the drives were detecting correctly).

Build is as follows:
Server
--Dell R620
--Perc H810

Rosewill 12 bay server chassis
--old intel core mobo+cpu (to power SAS expander)
--550W PSU
--HP 468406-B21 SAS Expander (do not know firmware revision)
--SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 Pass through
--RAID-6 (6x 6TB SATA NAS drives)
--RAID-1 (2x 1TB SATA drives)

This is the basic setup. The server was already built and the drives in a makeshift PC case wired directly to the PERC controller. It was ugly, and had no way to add hot spares or expand.

I just built out the rosewill case and got the expander to make it neater and allow for growth.
The PERC has both external SFF-8088 conenctors wired to the pass through, then SFF8087 to the expander. Four of the expanders backplane connectors are wired to the drive bays using SFF-8087 to 4x SATA cables.

All looks good, the expander and all drives/fans/drive LEDs power as expected. However the PERC does not detect the drives correctly. It detects a foreign config which is not entirely suprising, but it only shows one 6TB drive with a config. When I look at physical drives it shows all 8 drives, but instead of detecting 6x6TB and 2x1TB it shows 8 6TB drives. For grins I added another 1TB drive in a spare bay and rebooted. It then shows 9x 6TB drives.

Could this be a firmware issue, or has anyone seen anything like thie before?

I can probably update the firmware as I have an old HP server I can but linux on (once I put some RAM in it, someone scavenged the RAM).

Thanks in advance!
 

BradTheGeek

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Jun 15, 2017
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So - a few updates.

The firmware on the PERC H810 was 2 revisions old. I updated that to no avail.

Some interesting behavior to report. With the drives plugged directly into the PERC (IE no SAS Expander), they detect correctly, in addition in the RAID BIOS under physical disks they show up as Drive IDs --:--:01, --:--02 etc. Each one is a unique ID.

With the expander in between I started with one drive and this is what happens. First drive connected gets drive ID 01:00:00. If I stay in the RAID BIOS and add drives, it does not matter whether it is a SAS or SATA or what capacity it is, as I add drives the hardware specs, revision, model of the drive all match the first drive, and the ID for all subsequent drives is also 01:00:00

So it is detecting the drives attached, but giving them all the same ID and info.

From this link: Dell OpenManage Server Administrator Version 7.4 Command Line Interface Guide

I gather that the id is connector:enclosure:slot - so the drives showing up as the same enclosure with no connector or slot is strange.

I am leaning toward figuring out how to flash the SAS expander next, but any other ideas are welcome!
 
Last edited:

Terry Kennedy

Well-Known Member
Jun 25, 2015
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New York City
www.glaver.org
All looks good, the expander and all drives/fans/drive LEDs power as expected. However the PERC does not detect the drives correctly. It detects a foreign config which is not entirely suprising, but it only shows one 6TB drive with a config. When I look at physical drives it shows all 8 drives, but instead of detecting 6x6TB and 2x1TB it shows 8 6TB drives. For grins I added another 1TB drive in a spare bay and rebooted. It then shows 9x 6TB drives.
Dell controllers have specific knowledge about Dell expanders. They will usually work with generic expanders like the ones in Supermicro cases. It wouldn't surprise me if HP was doing something unusual that the Dell firmware doesn't like. You might consider cross-flashing the H810 to whatever the generic LSI equivalent is. Note that there may not be a firmware package available to let you cross-flash back to Dell firmware.

Given that this is an expander cabinet and not all in one chassis, I'd suggest just getting some cheap IT-mode controller with generic firmware and cabling it to the expander to see what it reports. That will at least let you know if the expander + drives is behaving as expected.
 

BradTheGeek

New Member
Jun 15, 2017
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Thanks. I was thinking about cross-flashing the H810 as well for similar reasoning. However I had one concern I could not answer. I am not worried about flashing it back if it works. What am concerned about is losing my arrays. With the Dell Firmware I can import a foreign config from the drives even when moving disks around with some confidence that it will be okay. If I cross flash the adapter will it understand the foreign configs and handle that okay?
 

Terry Kennedy

Well-Known Member
Jun 25, 2015
1,140
594
113
New York City
www.glaver.org
Thanks. I was thinking about cross-flashing the H810 as well for similar reasoning. However I had one concern I could not answer. I am not worried about flashing it back if it works. What am concerned about is losing my arrays. With the Dell Firmware I can import a foreign config from the drives even when moving disks around with some confidence that it will be okay. If I cross flash the adapter will it understand the foreign configs and handle that okay?
Not guaranteed. Always better to back up the data first.
 

BradTheGeek

New Member
Jun 15, 2017
11
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I decided to get a decent LSI controller I found on ebay to test with. While I wait I am running a cloud backup, it will probably take all weekend. If the LSI pans out, I can try to crossflash the PERC adapter without worry of bricking it. If that works then I have a spare adapter or can use it in another project.