EMC KTN-STL3 15 bay chassis

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

R320cluster

New Member
Sep 15, 2021
13
4
3
I've only seen one 2.5" in this and it was a genuine EMC filler tray in the normal 3.5" caddy. You could remove it just by opening the caddy and push a LFF straight in. What does yours look like?

Mine are 005049496

Because of all the different name plates (2TB SAS, 100GB SSD etc) on them (as well as interposers) there will be loads of options that are all essentially the same thing with a different disk type sticker.
Much appreciated @bonox, that's exactly what I needed! Thankfully, a quick ebay search show they aren't too pricey, providing you already have the interposer (which I do).

I have two different tray part numbers with adapters amonst the 15 trays: 005050927 and 005050854. They all have interposer 303-115-003D. The stickers indicate SAS 15k 600Gb. If the 2.5" adapter is removed, the metal pins don't line up on a 3.5" drive and they don't have the blue spacers I've seen in pictures of the model you posted.
 

bonox

Member
Feb 23, 2021
87
20
8
If they're what i'm thinking of, you can pull those pins out and move them. The caddy should have another hole that suits the 3.5" disk. THe pin is double ended (ie a disk with two pins sticking out, one each side. Kind of like a spinning top toy.

Mine were exceedingly hard to extract, but you can pull them out and move them along to suit a 3.5 or 2.5" as needed.

I'm unfamiliar with the design differences between the metal ones (yours from the part number search) and the plastic/fibreglass ones like mine.
 

R320cluster

New Member
Sep 15, 2021
13
4
3
If they're what i'm thinking of, you can pull those pins out and move them. The caddy should have another hole that suits the 3.5" disk. THe pin is double ended (ie a disk with two pins sticking out, one each side. Kind of like a spinning top toy.

Mine were exceedingly hard to extract, but you can pull them out and move them along to suit a 3.5 or 2.5" as needed.

I'm unfamiliar with the design differences between the metal ones (yours from the part number search) and the plastic/fibreglass ones like mine.
Mine are actually plastic/fiberglass as well. I ordered some of the part number you mentioned for ~$6/each shipped. I will keep the adapted ones for a future shelf.

Thanks again for the help.
 

R320cluster

New Member
Sep 15, 2021
13
4
3
@bonox and others -- I just hooked my KTN-SL3 for the first time. I'm not familiar with the behavior of the indicator lights/screens in the back. I can see the disks in TrueNAS no problem. But, I've noticed that the KTN controllers are flashing green and blue dashes, not numbers like I've seen before on YouTube -- is this normal?

I'm running the shelf hooked up to a Dell R720 via an LSI 9200-8e IT mode HBA. I'm hooked to the lower controller only.
 
Last edited:

simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
If you have a dual port HBA, and your OS understands things, you can connect both. Microsoft Server OS need a multipath driver loading or it will see each disk twice. Linux of course is smart enough to work this out.. In this case your protecting yourself against a controller card failure in the shelf, or a cable failing.
 

bonox

Member
Feb 23, 2021
87
20
8
It's intended to support two different controller cards at each end to you can have a complete failure. This obviously causes problems for 'dumb' (ie not multi-path aware) drivers and software where you'll corrupt your files if you write two streams independently without oversight.
 
Last edited:

t4ir1

New Member
Jan 26, 2022
5
1
3
Hi everyone, first time posting on the this thread and just wanted to quickly say that it really helped me a lot! Thank for all the info you shared!
I'd like to ask something to you guys since you seem very familiar with this disk enclosure - Would it be possible to connect this device to an HP P222 Raid controller in order to create RAID array(s) on this enclosure? Most examples I google people connected this disk shelf to an LSI SAS card and used it in JBOD mode.
Thanks for the time!
 

bonox

Member
Feb 23, 2021
87
20
8
yes - the shelf is just an expander with a pile of disks connected to it. The P222 should be expected to see all the disks presented to it by the expander if the P222 is at least the same sas type as the expander, ie at least SAS2/6Gb.

Choosing a SAS1 era controller will not be expected to see the shelf and its contents.
 
Last edited:

bonox

Member
Feb 23, 2021
87
20
8
it says it supports up to 54 devices
so it's expected to work with an expander anyway.

It would also perhaps be remiss of me to point out though that there could be limits with the firmware on the card that might make it only talk to a D2600 or other HP enclosure. No idea if this is true, but if it is, alternative sas cards are cheap.

I gather from some quick googling that this is not likely to be a problem
 
Last edited:

t4ir1

New Member
Jan 26, 2022
5
1
3
@bonox, thank you very much for your inputs! I just ordered this shelf on eBay and I am excited to set it up.
As it comes with original hard drives, I guess I will first need to take care of the sector sizing thing before I can really use it, but I'm looking forward to have it set up!
 

bonox

Member
Feb 23, 2021
87
20
8
yep - don't forget that you can resize them together - no need to wait one by one. Also, if it has SATA drives anywhere, they'll only be accessible from the bottom controller.
 

t4ir1

New Member
Jan 26, 2022
5
1
3
Great stuff!
They are SAS though, 2TB 7,2k RPM, 6GBs. P/N: 005049496
I will probably connect one SAS cable from the bottom controller and another from the top one just for redundancy :)
 

t4ir1

New Member
Jan 26, 2022
5
1
3
Hey guys, small question: I connected the EMC disk shelf (bottom controller, diamond shapped port) to the P222 array controller from HP I mentioned above. Using sg_utils scan command I don't see the disk, but something like this:

$ sudo sg_scan -i

/dev/sg0: scsi0 channel=0 id=0 lun=0
HP P222 6.64 [rmb=0 cmdq=1 pqual=0 pdev=0xc]

/dev/sg1: scsi0 channel=1 id=0 lun=0

HP LOGICAL VOLUME 6.64 [rmb=0 cmdq=1 pqual=0 pdev=0x0]

The device sg1 are the internal disks of this server as a RAID array. The sg0 device, I am not really sure as it shows the P222 raid controller. That can't be the disk array because when I try to format, I get the following message:

$ sudo sg_format --format --size=512 /dev/sg0

HP P222 6.64 peripheral_type: storage array controller [0xc]
Unit serial number: PDSXH0BRH7E1P8
LU name: ��c
This format is only defined for disks (using SBC-2 or RBC) and MO media

sg_format failed: Malformed SCSI command

I appreciate any help you guys can throw my way!
 

simoncorner

Member
Apr 25, 2020
36
11
8
Looks like the disks are not being seen. The P222 is a RAID controller. If those disks have come out of an EMC device they are probably formatted as 520 bytes per sector. You will need a card in HBA mode to re-format them to 512 bps. It may be possible to switch the P222 into HBA mode . There are a couple of ways of trying. One involves booting into an HPE iso that has the commands in, the other is to use a script called hpsahba but that's a bit complicated.
 
  • Like
Reactions: t4ir1

bonox

Member
Feb 23, 2021
87
20
8
your problem is you're using a RAID card not an HBA. An HBA is straight pass through to the disk which means sg_utils should see everything. The RAID card is an intermediate that hides the disks from the OS and just presents logical volumes to the OS that may actually be one or more physical disks. And if the RAID card is only expecting 512byte disks, then nothing else will show up.

What does the RAID setup show? Are any devices visible from within the HP boot rom?

I suspect this is just a case of you haven't setup any logical volumes from within the RAID controller rom (F8 after iLO setup at boot if in an HP server, or whatever in some other unit). If that doesn't work then the 520byte disk not being recognised by the controller is the next issue.

The interposers that come with the sas caddies should support a SATA disk - try anything (SAS or SATA) you've got lying around known to be 512 byte and see if it is visible. Again though, it won't be visible to an operating system if you haven't setup at least a RAID 0 volume from within the P222 controller or the equivalent storage controller software HP provide.
 
Last edited:

t4ir1

New Member
Jan 26, 2022
5
1
3
Thanks for the help guys. After doing some search, Format is now in progress :)
Small tip for anyone trying to achieve the same with an HP Raid Controller.

First step is to activate HBA mode on the controller. You must install the 'ssacli' package from HP. Either download it or do it from the repository. Instructions here.

I own a Gen8 server and for the current RHEL releases v8.x HP does not provide the ssacli package anymore, only for Gen9 and above. Good news is, I configured the repo for RHEL version 7 and it worked perfectly on version v8.5!
Here is how my 'etc/yum.repos.d/spp.repo' file looked like:

[spp]
name=Service Pack for ProLiant
baseurl=htt://downloads.linux.hpe.com/repo/spp-gen8/rhel/7/x86_64/current
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/GPG-KEY-ServicePackforProLiant

After that, simply install the package ssacli and run the command: ssacli controller slot=0 modify hbamode=on with proper privileges and reboot the machine. You are good to go!
With sg_utils, you'll list the devices and you will be able to see the drives.

Thanks again for all the help in this thread!
 
  • Like
Reactions: bonox