S.M.A.R.T. Health Response for Smart Array P840 Controller

[mnicolazzo]

I have a DL-380 gen 9 with disks managed by RAID. If I retrieve S.M.A.R.T. information from a logical volume (such as /dev/sda) using smartctl, I get back information that indicates that this is the RAID controller, not the disks behind it. So I have two questions:

- Is the status returned by smartctl the status of the RAID controller itself?

- If so, how does this status relate to the status I get using hpssacli (which returns individual status for the controller, cache and battery/capacitor)

Thanks. 

[TTr]

> I get back information that indicates that this is the RAID controller...

Do you also get a line that says "Device does not support SMART"?

I do. I am guessing that since we are dealing with logical disks (LUNs) that are behind the raid controller, they can not be probed with the smartctl tool and you get the controller header information.

You might want to verify that you have the latest FW in the array and the latest smartctl version. 

>  how does this status relate to the status I get using hpssacli...

The hpssacli is the tool that interfaces directly with the controller, it was written for that purpose so obviously it will show all the device information in the raid controller environment. Keep in mind that the controller is a separate *subsystem* completely independent for the rest of the server and its OS. In order for an OS tool to be able to access that subsystem environment, it must be able to communicate with the controller and get all the details about the devices from the controller itself. 

What is it that you are trying to do if you with the smart information?

[mnicolazzo]

Thanks for the reply. I am trying to retrieve hw status inband on the server itself. When I query one of the logical drives, I actually do get "Available - device has SMART capability". But as you said, it appears to be the status from the controller itself (as the serial number returned would imply). I did find out that you can get status from the physical disks behind the controller using -d cciss,N smartctl option, but I decided to abandoned SMART and have instead chosen to use the Redfish RESTful API, which gives me what I want, as it has direct support for the HP SmartArray and NIC cards that I am monitoring.