DL380G3 SCSI Drive

[David Cannon_1]

Access arrows on drives remain lit all the time. No files on are on drives and no users. Drives are RAID 5 on SA5312 Contoller. Is this normal?

[Brent_34 · Accepted solution]

If the drives are part of an array the middle LED will be constantly lit. The far left LED's should only flash when the drives are accessed. The far right LED's will flash red for prefailure and go solid red during a failure.

Are you running this G3 in duplex? If so the 5i MUST be connected to the 2 drive backplane. If this is running in simplex have you tried a different cable? Reseat the card and cache on the card. Try updating the firmware if you can.

This also could be a problem with the drive backplane as the LED's are actually emitted from there. We have seen some backplanes actually missing LED's. Do you have another another backplane to test?

[Terri Harris]

This is normal if the other 2 drive LEDs are the following:

Online status: On (solid green)
Fault status: Off (no light)

The "access arrow" is actually the activity LED. From left to right (or top to bottom) the drive LEDs are:

Activity (arrow)
Online status (cylinder/drive icon)
Fault (cylinder/drive icon with an X through it).

It is the combination of all 3 LEDs which provides the status. This is explained in the Proliant Maintenance & Service Guide.

If activity (arrow) is solid green, online status is solid green and fault status is not on, then this is all normal.

[Brent_34]

On proliant hot plug HD's the access LED should only be on during access to the drive.

Please see:
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/universal-hdd-guide.pdf

The one thing I did fail to mention is if this is a very new RAID 5 setup it may be the background parity check causing the drive access LED to be on solid. This is a very disk intensive process. IF you go into the ACUXE does the status message indicate background parity is currently underway?

[David Cannon_1]

Terri:

The LED's on the 4 Hot Plug HD's in the RAID 5 Array behave as follows:
Far Left (Arrow) On (Solid Green)
Middle (Drive Icon) On Solid
Far Right (Fault) Off

The other 2 Hot Plug drives are connected to the onboard SA5i Controller. Only the Middle light is ON Solid. The Activity light flashes intermintently (Normal)

Brent:

The RAID 5 Array has been up and running for about a month. These are 146GB U320 HD's.

Thanks

[Brent_34]

Ok so it appears the 5i and that portion of the backplane are working correctly.
This leaves us with 2 possible scenarios as I see it.

1) We can rule out the 5312 and the cable by placing the 4 drive backplane on the 2nd 5i controller channel. The instructions for this are located inside the access panel at the top right. If the activity lights still stay on the backplane is the only common part to your your issue.

2) If they are no longer on then the issue lies with your 5312 or cable. Are we able to try a different cable going from the 5312 to the 4 drive backplane? Any bent pins? You can also try updating the firmware for the 5312
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/20196.html

Hope this helps

[Terri Harris]

Can you clarify exactly what you mean by "no files" on these drives?

[David Cannon_1]

Terri,

In answer to your question, no data has been stored on the Array (It does contain one folder created by W2K3 called WUTemp. It has been formatted to NTFS and parity has been established.

FYI-the drive sim/dup backplane has been replaced as some of the LED's where not working. The problem existed on the old backplane also.

[David Cannon_1]

Brent,

In answer to your previous suggestions:
1) I attached the 4 drives to the integrated SA5i using the Integrated Duplex SCSI configuration. The SA5312 had no drives attached. The SA5312 Array was picked up automatically by the integrated SA5i Controller (Very cool). All lights functioned the same (Access lights only lit when disk activity).
2) Reconnected 4 drives to SA5312 and re-configured Arrays to the proper controllers.
Used different cable for the SA5312. Same status as originally reported. (After a very short time access lights came on solid on 4 drives). SCSI cabling is PCI Duplex. Updated firmware to v2.58. No change.

[Brent_34]

David

Well it seems it's an issue with the SA5312.

This is one of the only controllers we don't have to test here in the lab to test if this is 'normal', but all other compaq array controllers do not behave this way. I can't help but think the controller is faulty.

I would say it's time to call 1 800 652 6672 and explain to them the troubleshooting that has been done to obtain a replacement.
If you are under a contract call 1 800 354 9000.