topic Re: Disk failures MSA20 upgrading to SmartStart 8.3 Frimware 8.6 in Disk Enclosures

Disk failures MSA20 upgrading to SmartStart 8.3 Frimware 8.6

Sad Team — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:21:47 GMT

Hi,

We are experiencing issues with our MSA20 storage enclosures which are connected externally to ProLiant DL 380 G5 servers using 6400 Smart Array Controllers for SCSI connectivity only (Arrays managed by controller module in the MSA20 itself).

Everything has been configured and running fine for a couple of years in some cases. When updating to SmartStart 8.30 and Firmware 8.6 the arrays on the MSA20 experience disk failures and in some cases the server will fail to boot with the MSA20 connected to the 6400 Smart Array Controller. If we try to replace a failed disk the array is lost.

I have found the following Advisory which seems to match our situation, however this advisory was published a year before SmartStart 8.30 and Firmware 8.6 were released:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=125&prodSeriesId=420469&prodTypeId=12169&objectID=c01232270

Has anyone else come across disk failure on MSA20 when upgrading to SmartStart 8.30 and Firmware 8.6?

Can anyone reccommend what steps we should take to prevent this from happening again? i.e. what is the safest SmartStart and Firmware versions for our configuration or should we switch to using dedicated SCSI controllers?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Brian

Re: Disk failures MSA20 upgrading to SmartStart 8.3 Frimware 8.6

Sys Admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:02:32 GMT

We just had an interesting experience, perhaps it can shed some light.
Similar setup, MSA20, 380G5, Storage Server 2003. We've been updating this roughly between 1-60 days after firmware/driver updates come out per maintenance windows. Firmware 8.6 was installed fine.

Just today the server hung/locked up, with no connectivity via RDP/KVM/iLO. We hard reset the server/MSA20, and when it came up we had drive failure after drive failure reported in the MSA. Eventually every drive was marked as bad. We ran diagnostics, then HP had us power down, pull the disk controller module in the G5, put it back in, and everything came back as if nothing wrong had *ever* occurred. (Server is acting normally and all the shares are accessible.) Still testing now, but it's rather scary. I don't know why a re-seating of this device would bring about this condition.

Re: Disk failures MSA20 upgrading to SmartStart 8.3 Frimware 8.6

Joerg Brundiers — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:08:29 GMT

Hello,

we have the same issue. DL380 + MSA20 + SA6400.
It crashed when running hpsum_hwdiscovery.exe. After a reboot of the MSA20 everythings works fine. This configuration was running fine for 3 years, but after upgrading to SmartStart 8.30 this error occured.
I have no suggestion to solve this problem.

Joerg

Re: Disk failures MSA20 upgrading to SmartStart 8.3 Frimware 8.6

someone847 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:05:57 GMT

Hi, same issue, what was your old version of Smartstart and firmware that was working?