topic Re: No Disk Lights in ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL)

No Disk Lights

Ken Richmond — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 16:54:27 GMT

ML350 G5, 5 disks in RAID5 Array. Array is fully funtional.

The only disk light that works is on the 5th disk in the array. The green light flashes, and the UID light will turn on when instructed, but the lights on the other 4 disks do not come on at all (including the UID). Any suggestions on where to look?

Thanks!
Ken

Re: No Disk Lights

Marek Nelec — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:11:25 GMT

LEDs on the SCSI backplane are dead? Or the "fibre optic" plastic on the inner side of the HDD caddy is VERY dirty?

Re: No Disk Lights

Ken Richmond — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:20:33 GMT

These are hot plug drives, so they don't have the 'fibre optic' plastic.

Re: No Disk Lights

Marek Nelec — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:45:33 GMT

Sorry, I meant "plastic fibre optic "cable"". English is not my primary language and I'm rather tired now. If you pull out an HP Hot Pluggable drive you will see the that on the back of the HDD Caddy (or bracket)it has three "plastic fibre optic "cables"" that transmit the light from the SCSI backplane to the front of the HDD. First LED on the backplane is activity LED, second one is online LED, third LED is prefailure/failure LED.

Re: No Disk Lights

Prashant (I am Back) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:06:45 GMT

yes, he is refering to a fiber canle for led light transimission not for data transmission. so it might be bad.
in front of the hdd there are not leds but those long fiber strached solid core pipes.

Prashant S.

Re: No Disk Lights

Igor Karasik — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:22:51 GMT

Ken,
I see similar behaviour on Proliant servers and firmware upgrade for SmartArray/SCSI drives solve it.

Re: No Disk Lights

Ken Richmond — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:45:21 GMT

I've just been looking into this further, and in System Management, for the four drives that don't light up, it shows:

Port Box 0 Bay 0

For the one drive that does light up, it shows:

Port 2| Box 1 Bay 5

I flashed the System ROM, but I can't find any ROM updates for the E200i array controller. Is this part of the system ROM? If not, where can I find the ROM for this controller?

Re: No Disk Lights

Marek Nelec — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:05:21 GMT

AFAIK there isn't any update for E200 controller available yet. OK, try this:
1. Power down the server
2. Take out all the drives from the drive cage
3. While looking at the SCSI backplane turn the power
4. Each drive has two LEDs associated with it
5. When you power up the machine the leds go like this:
a) first LED lights green
b) second LED lights blue
c) second LED lights orange
d) first LED lights green

if after powering up the server, some LEDs won't emit light, then you have problem with the SCSI backplane.

Re: No Disk Lights

Ken Richmond — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:16:27 GMT

Hi Marlek,

I just pulled all of the drives and observed the LEDs. They did light up in the sequence you described. I replaced the drives and observed the same sequence with the drives in place. But drives 1-4 remain dark when the server came back up.

Re: No Disk Lights

Marek Nelec — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:45:44 GMT

Well, in that case it may be a problem with the SA-E200 firmware. You may open case with HP, or just wait for the general release of the firmware update (actually there is f/w upgrade, but only if you use E200 in ML110 G4 or ML150 G3 servers).