PERC 6/E + Norco 4220 + MegaCLI enclosureID funnies

[devlinse]

Hi folks,

I've been following the site for a while and its been very insightful And now predictably, comes a question

I've a Perc 6/E hooked up to a (I think) Norco 4220 (it's been rebadged). It's all working fine. However, I'm having a devil of a job figuring out which slots in the chassis (5 rows of 4) map to the channels reported by the card which is where megacli pdlocate enters the picture. However, almost all of the commands require me to specify an enclosureId as an argument, and try what I might, I cannot get the PERC6 to return an EnclosureID.

If I look at the physical disks via megacli, they are all reported correctly but never with a corresponding enclosure ID. It's been suggested that this might be a function of a SAS expander, but I'm reluctant to buy one on the off chance and LSI support suggested using 252 (the value where no expander is present) but that doesn't seem to work.

Does anyone use the PERC6 in conjunction with the chassis that might have some hints?

Cheers

 

[Patrick]

It's been suggested that this might be a function of a SAS expander, but I'm reluctant to buy one on the off chance and LSI support suggested using 252 (the value where no expander is present) but that doesn't seem to work.

The Norco RPC-4220 and RPC-4224 are simple JBOD enclosures so they are exposing disks rather than looking like a Dell disk shelf. The quote above was exactly what I was thinking since I generally see enclosures when using disks through SAS expanders.

 

[devlinse]

The Norco RPC-4220 and RPC-4224 are simple JBOD enclosures so they are exposing disks rather than looking like a Dell disk shelf. The quote above was exactly what I was thinking since I generally see enclosures when using disks through SAS expanders.

Hi Patrick, thanks for this. I suppose the question was more, how do you make megacli work when there isn't an enclosure/expander?

Having said that, some of it may have been syntax problems on my part (megacli isn't exactly friendly) and I've made some progress. At least now I can query a physical disk.

C:\MegaCLI>MegaCli.exe -PDInfo PhysDrv[:25] -a0

Enclosure Device ID: N/A
Slot Number: 25
Device Id: 25
Sequence Number: 2
Media Error Count: 0
Other Error Count: 1
Predictive Failure Count: 0
Last Predictive Failure Event Seq Number: 0
PD Type: SATA
Raw Size: 1.819 TB [0xe8e088b0 Sectors]
Non Coerced Size: 1.818 TB [0xe8d088b0 Sectors]
Coerced Size: 1.818 TB [0xe8d00000 Sectors]
Firmware state: Online
SAS Address(0): 0x45623b46ccbaac9a
Connected Port Number: 7(path0)
Inquiry Data: WD-WMAZA6488437WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0
FDE Capable: Not Capable
FDE Enable: Disable
Secured: Unsecured
Locked: Unlocked
Foreign State: None
Device Speed: Unknown
Link Speed: Unknown
Media Type: Hard Disk Device

So the next step is to determine why when I use pdlocate against it, it's not found.

C:\MegaCLI>megacli -PDLocate start PhysDrv[:25] -a0

Adapter: 0: Physical Device at EnclId-N/A SlotId-25 could not be located

Exit Code: 0x24

It could just be that the functionality isn't supported, I suppose?

Cheers

 

[devlinse]

Actually, I note that if I boot the machine and go into the card BIOS, the LED Blinking function is disabled when browsing to the physical disks, so perhaps it is a lack of support. I'd be interested if anyone with a PERC6 and one of these has that function available.

 

[MiniKnight]

Sold my PERC 6 awhile back for a faster 6.0gbps controller.

 

[devlinse]

Not a lot of point with the 4220 as it's 3Gbps (as are all my disks).

 

[devlinse]

Updating my own ageing post.

In the end, I picked up an IBM M1015 and rigged it up with a HP SAS expander. I did establish though that the chassis is a 6Gbps unit (red caddies rather than blue IIRC) so happy days - sadly it's already jammed full of 3Gbps drives but...) The two cards happily co-exist for migration purposes and I don't really need the external connection now.

I never did get to the bottom of the drive LED locate function though although I finally realised (with something of a doh!) that the OS was including motherboard native SATA ports in the total count so the ones in the chassis didn't start at zero. I've just made a note of the drive ID's on a diagram for future reference. Old school but it works!

 

[Patrick]

I use an Excel spreadsheet for this. Makes it easy

I never did get to the bottom of the drive LED locate function though although I finally realised (with something of a doh!) that the OS was including motherboard native SATA ports in the total count so the ones in the chassis didn't start at zero. I've just made a note of the drive ID's on a diagram for future reference. Old school but it works!