MD1220 Only recognizing 5 drives.

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Requiescat

New Member
May 31, 2021
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Hey all. I'm trying to fill my MD1220 but it will only recognize at most 5 drives.

I have done the following:
Confirm all drives function individually
Confirm all 24 bays recognize a drive when used individually
Confirm that the enclosure is not the issue (I have 25x MD1220s and have tested 3 different enclosures)
Confirm that the controllers are not the issue (See above)
Confirm that the PSUs are not the issue (See above)
Confirm that my 8088 cables are functioning (Tried 10 different cables)
Confirm that my 9207-8e HBA card is functioning (Tried both ports)
Confirm 9207-8e is in IT mode on newest firmware (20.0...)
Confirm drivers are installed on Linux (ubuntu) host (20.0...)

The drives used are Seagate Barracuda Compute 5tb (ST5000LM000)
My host computer is a X299 platform, 10980xe. Using a LSI 9207-8e HBA card.
I do not plan to put my drives in a RAID array.

I'm at my wits end and appreciate any and all assistance.
 

acor254

New Member
Jun 11, 2021
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Have you tried it with smaller drives? I remember having weird issues with a MD1000 that would not let me use drives bigger than 2TB despite everything else supporting that. The MD1220 was from same time frame if I remember right. It ended up being the firmware on the shelf limiting drive size. It may be limited to a capacity total per chassis or something weird. Or set to dual controller split plane, But then I would expect up to 6 functional drives.
 

Requiescat

New Member
May 31, 2021
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Have you tried it with smaller drives? I remember having weird issues with a MD1000 that would not let me use drives bigger than 2TB despite everything else supporting that. The MD1220 was from same time frame if I remember right. It ended up being the firmware on the shelf limiting drive size. It may be limited to a capacity total per chassis or something weird. Or set to dual controller split plane, But then I would expect up to 6 functional drives.
I'll try using two cables to see if there's some dual controller nonsense.

As far as the firmware on the shelf, how might I go about updating that? I have the password reset cable already
 

acor254

New Member
Jun 11, 2021
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I'll try using two cables to see if there's some dual controller nonsense.

As far as the firmware on the shelf, how might I go about updating that? I have the password reset cable already
I never did get anywhere with ours at work and we ended up getting different shelves that did not have that limitation. ie like DataOn and Supermicro. I know those Dell shelves are EOL and they did not have any firmware updates to fix the issue last I saw. You could check Dell's support site to see if they ever put out any firmware updates on those. My gut tells me your issue is its something like discussed above with the MD1220 though not the other parts you have.
 

psannz

Member
Jun 15, 2016
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Since you are running SATA disks, did you try the MD1220s with just the first controller installed?
I'm guessing you're not using Interposers, right?

Btw, you do realise that those drives are SMR, right? DM-SMR to be exact.
 

Requiescat

New Member
May 31, 2021
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It seems like the only thing not swapped is the 9207? I'd try that or hook the shelf to a different PC.
Here is a similar issue that appears to have been a bad card
https://www.reddit.com/r/unRAID/comments/iaa7ys
I contacted the ebay seller I purchased the card from and they sent me a new one for free. Will update if this worked when I receive it.

Since you are running SATA disks, did you try the MD1220s with just the first controller installed?
I'm guessing you're not using Interposers, right?

Btw, you do realise that those drives are SMR, right? DM-SMR to be exact.
I did not try with just the first controller installed, however I am only connecting to the first controller. I plan to daisy chain 4 units per port on my HBA card, so single path. Correct, not using interposers.

Yes I realise they are SMR drives. My use case for this setup permits SMR drives.
 

psannz

Member
Jun 15, 2016
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I did not try with just the first controller installed, however I am only connecting to the first controller. I plan to daisy chain 4 units per port on my HBA card, so single path. Correct, not using interposers.
Removing one of the controllers might help, basically closes down the unused path from the backplane. Contrary to the MD1200, which allows for 3,5" SATA disks, the MD1220s Drive Support Matrix does not list any SATA disks:
 

Requiescat

New Member
May 31, 2021
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Removing one of the controllers might help, basically closes down the unused path from the backplane. Contrary to the MD1200, which allows for 3,5" SATA disks, the MD1220s Drive Support Matrix does not list any SATA disks:
As I understand it, the SAS interface and expansion cards shouldn't have any issue with SATA drives. It's all up to the HBA card rather.

Also, anecdotaly, my friend has a MD1220 and is using SATA drives as well, but has a Dell PERC card rather than a generic HBA.
 

Requiescat

New Member
May 31, 2021
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I have received my new HBA card and now 10/20 drives are appearing. A step in the right direction but still stumping me. I'm certain that the enclosure is in unified mode, so now I'm back to square one basically.
 

gregsachs

Active Member
Aug 14, 2018
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The 5 or 10 of 20 is really odd; my first thought was maybe something with only one lane connected, but that doesn't make sense given that the backplane connectors are 6 drives/connector. See page 15 for what I mean:
I would think that any one lane of the 4 in the SFF-8088 would be sufficient to see all drives.
Can you daisy chain off of another system and see how many drives are seen?
 

Requiescat

New Member
May 31, 2021
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The 5 or 10 of 20 is really odd; my first thought was maybe something with only one lane connected, but that doesn't make sense given that the backplane connectors are 6 drives/connector. See page 15 for what I mean:
I would think that any one lane of the 4 in the SFF-8088 would be sufficient to see all drives.
Can you daisy chain off of another system and see how many drives are seen?
I will try and get one of the units over to a different PC and see what happens.

For sanity, I switched the MD1220 to split mode and connected both controllers, to my surprise no drives appeared.
 

Requiescat

New Member
May 31, 2021
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I took one of the MD1220s over to my windows PC and connected it via HBA card. Plugged in all 20 drives, turned on the MD1220, waited 5 minutes, then turned on my windows PC. Upon loading disk partition I can see drives 12 drives, implying that the unit is in split mode. It is not.

I then pulled out one of the EMM controllers from the MD1220, performed the same process of booting, waiting, then starting my windows PC, and to my surpise only 9/20 drives appear.

Currently in the process of testing different PCIE slots on both my Linux machine and Windows to rule out any weird PCIE lane limitations imposed by the motherboard.
 

Requiescat

New Member
May 31, 2021
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Back on my Linux machine now, and 12 drives are visible. Now we're getting somewhere. This is leading me to believe that there is something causing the enclosure to enter split mode, even though it's not set to be in split mode. Anyone have a way to check the enclosure configuration on a Linux machine?
 

gregsachs

Active Member
Aug 14, 2018
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Back on my Linux machine now, and 12 drives are visible. Now we're getting somewhere. This is leading me to believe that there is something causing the enclosure to enter split mode, even though it's not set to be in split mode. Anyone have a way to check the enclosure configuration on a Linux machine?
sg_ses can be super frustrating to figure out the syntax, but for pulling the diagnostic pages it isn't bad.

Install sg3_utils
sg_map -i
/dev/sg* devices are expanders
sg_ses -p 0 /dev/sg7
show pages of expander at /dev/sg7
Will this help? dunno, but may be able find a difference vs a unit that is working correctly...
 
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Requiescat

New Member
May 31, 2021
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sg_ses can be super frustrating to figure out the syntax, but for pulling the diagnostic pages it isn't bad.

Install sg3_utils
sg_map -i
/dev/sg* devices are expanders
sg_ses -p 0 /dev/sg7
show pages of expander at /dev/sg7
Will this help? dunno, but may be able find a difference vs a unit that is working correctly...
This was very helpful, thank you.

Upon checking. I do have 12 drives visible (dev/sg1 - /dev/sg12) by "sg_map -i" and also the enclosure it self as /dev/sg13
 
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gregsachs

Active Member
Aug 14, 2018
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Just thinking out loud here, mapping signal paths.
From the drive, if it is SAS it has A and B lanes. If SATA, it can have A and B lanes with use of interposer, but without it only has "A". I believe that there are both SAS-SAS dumb interposers and SATA-SAS smart interposers. Either will work to connect a SATA drive to A, but only the smart one works to get connection to B.
If you have SATA drives and don't have appropriate interposers, only EMM A will be connected to the drives. (Saw drive called out above, SATA)
Enclosure carries the backplane. Each backplane has 24x dual port SAS connectors on the front side. On the back side, these get routed to 2 sets of 4 connectors which each carry signals from 6x SAS ports to the EMM units.
So all "A" SAS ports go to EMM A via 4 connectors, and all "B" SAS ports go to EMM B. These connections are 1-6, 7-12, 13-18, and 19-24. Damaged pins on the backplane/EMM interface might show as certain drive slots not working.

EMM units are functionally SAS expanders, connecting the backplane to the rear ports.
Uplink port on the EMM is not supposed to matter.

Are you using the A EMM, left port as you look at the rear of the unit? This should be the top one.
With the Netapp DS2246 I have in my basement, the caddies have the interposer integrated and it isn't possible to run a drive without it. I believe the MD12220 is the same. I wonder if some of your caddies are bad....
Does the problem map to specific caddies? You mention that all slots in backplane were verified good, I assume that was done by taking 1 drive and moving it slot-slot?