Xeon D-1541 Quanta storage servers on ebay

[lnxpro]

i ordered a second server a few weeks ago. indeed it came with the wrong rails. i sent them a message and they sent me the correct rails.
as far as reliability, first server seems to be fine. I moved my unraid flash drive and hard drives to the server and it has been working fine for the most part but it seems to be crashing every few weeks. the hardware event logs in the BMC don't show any hardware issues so my issue is either flash drive, or something else. I have yet to try a new flash drive and see if the issue persists.
the second server I haven't tested yet as I didn't have time to mount it in the rack and waiting on the correct rails put a pause on that. lol

 

[Burksdb]

i ordered a second server a few weeks ago. indeed it came with the wrong rails. i sent them a message and they sent me the correct rails.
as far as reliability, first server seems to be fine. I moved my unraid flash drive and hard drives to the server and it has been working fine for the most part but it seems to be crashing every few weeks. the hardware event logs in the BMC don't show any hardware issues so my issue is either flash drive, or something else. I have yet to try a new flash drive and see if the issue persists.
the second server I haven't tested yet as I didn't have time to mount it in the rack and waiting on the correct rails put a pause on that. lol

Did you go thru all of the bios and firmware updates? i had one that was acting flakey before i did the updates.

 

[lnxpro]

Did you go thru all of the bios and firmware updates? i had one that was acting flakey before i did the updates.

Yes. I did. followed the art of server's video and updated the SAS expander first. Then the BMC and the BIOS.
I honestly think it must be an issue with my flash drive. I have been moving that from server to server to server over the years. The only time I ever did a clean fresh install was on the initial install many many years ago when I started with version 5.something. lol.
I'll get a new flash drive for it and do a fresh install.

 

[Navy_BOFH]

i ordered a second server a few weeks ago. indeed it came with the wrong rails. i sent them a message and they sent me the correct rails.
as far as reliability, first server seems to be fine. I moved my unraid flash drive and hard drives to the server and it has been working fine for the most part but it seems to be crashing every few weeks. the hardware event logs in the BMC don't show any hardware issues so my issue is either flash drive, or something else. I have yet to try a new flash drive and see if the issue persists.
the second server I haven't tested yet as I didn't have time to mount it in the rack and waiting on the correct rails put a pause on that. lol

Can you send pics of the rails? I bought mine months ago - and I haven't racked it yet and wondering now if I got the wrong ones.

 

[FlorianZ]

Earlier in this thread there was some chatter about 3.5" SATA drives not working reliably with this machine. Is that still the case after updating all the firmware? My apologies if this was already addressed and I missed it.

 

[semidetached]

Earlier in this thread there was some chatter about 3.5" SATA drives not working reliably with this machine. Is that still the case after updating all the firmware? My apologies if this was already addressed and I missed it.

I updated the backplane firmware before putting any drives in and I've had 6 x 6TB SATA running strong for a few months. No issues.

 

[lnxpro]

Can you send pics of the rails? I bought mine months ago - and I haven't racked it yet and wondering now if I got the wrong ones.

don't have the wrong rails handy but the wrong rails are the sliding ones.
the correct "rails" have a bottom lip that the server just sits on.

 

[lnxpro]

Earlier in this thread there was some chatter about 3.5" SATA drives not working reliably with this machine. Is that still the case after updating all the firmware? My apologies if this was already addressed and I missed it.

Indeed, flashing the sas expander firmware fixes that issue. The SAS expander firmware has to be done before doing the BIOS or BMC. Also, good luck finding the firmware. Quanta removed all firmware from the website.

 

[FlorianZ]

Thank you @semidetached and @lnxpro. Really appreciate the help!

Well, that's a bummer with regards to the firmware no being available anymore, but thank you for the heads up. That sort of kills it for me . Hate to ask, but anyone happen to have local copies of the latest files and willing to generously share them?

 

[semidetached]

Well, that's a bummer with regards to the firmware no being available anymore, but thank you for the heads up. That sort of kills it for me . Hate to ask, but anyone happen to have local copies of the latest files and willing to generously share them?

I zipped up everything I found: two revs of the BIOS and BMC, the expander FW, and both IT and IR FW for the SAS controller. My expander identified itself as the "S2PH" model, so I used the "Broadcom" file.

Quanta_SD1Q.zip

drive.google.com

 

[FlorianZ]

@semidetached you're a saint. Thank you!

 

[fiftynine]

Ordered a few after selling off an old server. Shipping across the pond costs more than the servers, but such is life of a homelabber.

 

[Navy_BOFH]

don't have the wrong rails handy but the wrong rails are the sliding ones.
the correct "rails" have a bottom lip that the server just sits on.

Yup I have the wrong ones then - I have some Kingslide rails that look like what I would see in a Dell box... except I ordered my server back when these were first talked about... good luck getting replacements now.

 

[sleeper404]

Seems like I might have bricked mine through the BIOS update procedures. I managed to get the BMC updated to 3.33 and run the linux utilities to flash the BIOS to 3A14, but now never posts... Anyone have an idea on downgrading procedures for the BIOS to see if I can save myself? BMC is still accessible.

 

[lnxpro]

Seems like I might have bricked mine through the BIOS update procedures. I managed to get the BMC updated to 3.33 and run the linux utilities to flash the BIOS to 3A14, but now never posts... Anyone have an idea on downgrading procedures for the BIOS to see if I can save myself? BMC is still accessible.

you can flash it through the BMC web interface. but the big question is, did you update the SAS expander firmware first? if you didn't and if you don't have the old bios update file, you are not going to be able to fix it. the SAS expander has to be updated before you update the BIOS.

 

[lnxpro]

you can flash it through the BMC web interface. but the big question is, did you update the SAS expander firmware first? if you didn't and if you don't have the old bios update file, you are not going to be able to fix it. the SAS expander has to be updated before you update the BIOS.

post #190 has a firmware zip file. you can try flashing the .12 bios through the BMC web interface then update the SAS expander firmware and then update the bios to latest .14 version.

 

[sleeper404]

I did manage to get it downgraded through the BMC, but I've botched the SAS firmware updates. After ran the efi sas3flash.efi -o -e 6 erase command to work towards updating the SAS controller it appears to be stuck. I've tried to finish up clearing the flash with megarec and I'm kind of at an impasse. It's been an interesting weekend trying to get this thing to the point of being able to boot unraid with some SATA disks, I wanted to get it to IT mode on the controller at the same time but maybe I was a bit too ambitious.

 

[fiftynine]

you can flash it through the BMC web interface. but the big question is, did you update the SAS expander firmware first? if you didn't and if you don't have the old bios update file, you are not going to be able to fix it. the SAS expander has to be updated before you update the BIOS.

So just to recap, flash order is:
1.) Bmc
2.) Sas expander
3.) Bios?

I'll hopefully get my hands on these come next week. Any news on non-java iKVM?

 

[sleeper404]

3.33 BMC still runs a java KVM so I doubt it'll see any changes there. I would go SAS expander --> BMC --> BIOS, but so far I've just upgraded BMC and bricked my mezz card so take my advice with a big grain of salt.

 

[fiftynine]

So after Fedex initially promised the shipment to be on 10. day of February, I finally received two servers today on the 25. A tad bit late, but not a big deal. Luckily kids were at grandparents so I had a free evening to spend it with best way I could imagine - tinkering with new hardware.

First one booted up fine, it was a wee bit banged up but every tray slides out fine. No problems so far with this one.

Other one was a bit more banged up. The rear 2,5" trays didn't slide out. There's a metallic ear in the rear which was turned into a U shape and it blocked the trays, I did my best to straighten it out but the 2,5" trays still didn't slide out. O well. So I tried booting it up, fans spin up twice but there's no picture out. The other server puts out video as the fans spin a bit down second time, but this one doesn't. I tried the psu's, multiple sticks of ram. Any ideas what to try? I checked the green/red leds on the motherboard, too. They both light up and act same way as far as I could tell.