Proliant ML350 G5 Auxilary SATA port with Tandberg RDX Drive

[AycheKay]

We have two ML350 G5 servers deployed with Tandberg RDX drives connected to the "auxilary" SATA port.

Everything works fine until the server suffers a "hard shutdown". After a "hard shutdown" the drive is not detected until you do a proper shutdown or reboot.

It appears that a "hard shutdown" actually disables the SATA port whereas a proper shutdown or reboot allows the RDX drive to function on that "optical SATA port".

Any suggestions? Is this a problem or by design?

[Brian_Murdoch]

Hi,

The SATA port has boot priority over the IDE port so perhaps it is a BIOS order issue where the assumption is that the optional SATA DVD drive is installed.

Can you try changing the boot order so that the CD-ROM is lower than the hard drive in the boot order.
Press F9 and change the setting in the (Standard Boot Order (IPL)) section of the BIOS

It might require a fix in the BIOS but I have checked the ML350 G5 BIOS history and although there are recent fixes for USB devices there is no mention of any SATA port issues.
If you wish to download the latest BIOS for the ML350 G5 you can locate it here.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1121586&prodNameId=3279711&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-92865cf85ad54b1b9664bc617f

There is a list of compatible SATA controllers for the RDX here and known issues.

http://www.rdxstorage.com/docs/RDX_Compatibility_Guide_1_8.pdf

I assume the ML350 G5 SATA port includes one of these chipsets mentioned.

It may be possible that the RDX drive is not initialising quickly enough when the system goes through power up. This would be a Tanberg firmware issue however.

I hope this helps,

Brian

[AycheKay]

I wrote:
<>

Clarification:
We tested a SATA hard drive while the server was running and booted into Windows, since SATA is supposed to be hot-swappable, and the hard drive did not get detected. (Note that the RDX drive wasn't showing up in My Computer or under the Device Manager when we performed this test.)

Just thought I would mention it.

[AycheKay]

Brian,

You mentioned checking the compatibility list to see if that drive is compatible with the servers SATA chipset/controller. One of the problems is that we've been unable to find any information on what chipset/controller runs that SATA port. All the information in the device manager just points to the Smart Array E200i controller, which, I presume, has nothing to do with that SATA port.

And, by the way, we do have the latest BIOS firmware on that motherboard.

[Kensy2]

any update on this any resolution?


http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1270791

[AycheKay]

No update. We still have this problem. It just means our backups fail occasionally because the RDX drive is "missing". For us, a reboot always fixes the problem and a power failure always creates the problem.

[Todd Porter]

I have no idea what RDX is but I believe I can answer the question. I use many of the ML350 G5 series and usually install SCO on them. During the initial boot process I use a driver link (defbootstr link=hpsas hd=Sdsk Sdsk=hpsas(0,0,0,0) Srom=wd(0,0,0). I have tried using just Srom=wd(0,0,0) to only test the cd itself but that never works without first typing the link=hpsas first, so I am assuming the sata port is part of the e200i controller which uses the hpsas driver, and without loading the driver first the cdrom always fails to come up.

[Todd Porter]

something else I thought of... since the sata IS part of the e200i controller, when I go into BIOS I cannot change the e200i/IDE hard drive boot order in the submenu. I can only change the floppy/cdrom/hd order in the main menu. Iam not sure if the cdrom in boot order correlates to the SATA port on the e200i thou because that is what ships in the server by default. Sorry I couldn't help more but I haven't changed much in the BIOS and I do not have one in front of me to look.