ML350 G5 will not recognize 8 drives

[paul courry]

We have an ML350 G5 under maintenance. HP has replaced every part except the power supplies, CPU and memory, everything has been replaced, sometimes more than once in an effort to solve this problem.

During bootup the E200i controller will initialize if there are 7 drives or fewer in the internal SFF disk array. Once you plug that 8th drive in the E200i caching controller will not initialize for love or money. It does not matter what 7 drives we choose, the 8th one will cause the controller to fail to initialize.

We have gone so far as to move the server to another circuit to eliminate the UPS as a cause and yes, it has dual power supplies. Both HP and myself have exhausted the possible causes.

Has anyone seen a similar problem?

[scharchouf]

Hi

Can you give us information about HDD installed on the server capacity SAS or SATA ...

[paul courry]

It is a tower chassis with a SFF drive cage so it holds 8 drives.

Slots 1 & 2 are DP 10K 3Gb/sec SAS 146Gb drives in a Raid 1 config

Slots 3,4,5,6,7,8 are DP 10K 6Gb/sec SAS 900Gb drives in a Raid 5 config

We are aware the E200i controller is a 3Gb/sec controller.

The power draw on the 900Gb drives is slightly less than the 146Gb drives.

Drive compatibility has been confirmed with HP.

[Ali]

hi,

was just checking the quickspecs to see the amount of internal storage is supported in a single logical drive

 I guess you have all SFF drives.

Maximum Internal Storage
One of the following depending on model

Hot Plug LFF SATA 6TB 6 x 1TB

Hot Plug LFF SAS 6TB 6 x 1TB

Hot Plug SFF SATA 4.0TB 8 x 500GB

Hot Plug SFF SAS 4.0TB 8 x 500GB

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12475_div/12475_div.html

Raid 5 volume is 900x6=5400 which higher than supported capacity (4096)

Controller supports the higher capacity but server internal storage has some limitation as per quickspecs.

hope this helps,

how to say thanks... Click on Star Kudos

cheers!

Ali

[paul courry]

I'm sorry Ali, but 500Gb was the maximum size drive sold by HP at the time that document was written, it is not the maximum size supported.

We configured and ran for two days a 6 x 900Gb in a Raid 5 config. We did not have a problem until I came in 48 hours later and noticed a red light.