Issues with Dell dual Internal SD Modules on Gen 12 or higher servers?

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frogtech

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Jan 4, 2016
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So I picked up 8 SanDisk Ultra SD cards from Amazon, 2 for each of my 4 M620 blade servers, and everything works fine when the internal dual SD module is set for Redundancy disabled, however, if I enable redundancy, populate the second SD card slot, and then press "Y" to rebuild the redundancy when the system POSTs, the entire thing goes to shit. Meaning, either both SD cards just become completely invisible to the system or SD1 module goes to "failed" status and SD2 goes to "offline".

Very weird behavior, I wonder if somehow the SD cards are the issue here as I've read that things under the hood other than advertised size need to be 100% the same. I could test the theory I guess by just getting Dell SD cards off fleabay or trying Samsung EVO microSD cards with SD card adapters.

I've updated the firmware on the modules and this behavior is the same on all 4 blades. Anyone ever had a similar problem on the rack or blade servers?
 

vanfawx

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Jan 4, 2015
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We have a bunch of servers with these. They came with San Disk 32GB SD Cards from our vendor, and work just fine. Most of them we run with a single card, but we have a handful with redundant 32gb sd cards. They "just worked". This is on FC430's.

What firmware do you have on your IDSDM module? 1.7?
 

frogtech

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Jan 4, 2016
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We have a bunch of servers with these. They came with San Disk 32GB SD Cards from our vendor, and work just fine. Most of them we run with a single card, but we have a handful with redundant 32gb sd cards. They "just worked". This is on FC430's.

What firmware do you have on your IDSDM module? 1.7?
1.10 for 11/12G servers.

I guess it has to be the cards. It can't be coincidence that the mirroring function doesn't work at all in any of them. Maybe they're counterfeit. The SDHC icon for the drive when the sd card is formatted in Windows is suspect as hell but I could be way off base. Ill probably just get 8GB cards, don't really know why I need 32 GB.
 

frogtech

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Jan 4, 2016
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So it turns out that there is nothing wrong with the SD cards or the modules, the 'module has gone offline' is a normal error message and the rebuild just takes a -really- long time, especially for 32GB cards. I noticed this when I tried some 8GB modules I took today, and after pressing 'Y' to rebuild and noticing how quickly it got to 5 percent completed, I popped back in the 32GB and noticed if I waited long enough the rebuild would finally take place.

However the rebuild for 32 GB takes too long and even though I technically won't be doing it that often, I did end up keeping the 8GBs simply for possible rebuild time convenience and because I don't really need 32GB for ESXi.
 
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