SmartArray P410i shows drives twice

[Kopp2]

Hi all,
following problem.
I have DL370 G6 with SA P410i (18 SAS drives connected) and SA P212 without connected drives.
SAS HDDs are placed:
Box1: 2x 72GB SAS (Raid1) and 4x 300GB SAS (Raid5).
Box2: 6x 300GB SAS (Raid5)
Box3: 6x 300GB SAS (Raid5)
OS: w2k8 std x64 sp1
Firmware: 8.60
PSP: 8.30A
Newest ACU: 8.35.7.0.

Strange is, ACU shows in arrays C and D even 12 HDDs instead of 6!!! (see attached screenshot).

Any ideas ?
Thx in advance!

[TTr]

The P410i can not connect to all 3 cages without an expander card. How were the drive cages wired? Do you have an expander card?

The wiring is probably wrong and the 410i sees each drive twice because they are dual port drives.

[Kopp2]

Hi TTr,
thx for the info.

I checked SMH and I see unter "Smart Array P410i Controller on System Board" 3 x Storage Boxes:
-----
Port 2C Box 1
Port 4C Box 2
Port 6C Box 3
-----
(screenshot left side)

Each of them shows:
Connection Type: SAS Attached
Drive Bays: 24
Vendor: HP
Model: HP SAS EXP Card

It indicates, expansion card is in use, right?

Strange is, that ACU shows Ports 2c, 3c, 4c, 5c, 6c, 7c...
(screenshot right side)

PS: I will check the wiring today.

[u84823]

Seems like a lot of physical disks for that array controller.

Also this server isn't on the compatibility list: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/arraycontrollers/sas-expander/questionsanswers.html#1c

Finally it looks that all cages should be cabled (with two cables each) to the expander board directly,

"The HP SAS Expander Card has 6 Mini SAS 4i ports intended for attachment to server drive backplanes allowing support for up to 24 drive bays (3 drive backplanes with each holding 8 drive bays)."

HTH

[TTr]

The server is supported. The DL370 G6 and ML370 G6 are identical servers. The ML is tower, the DL is rack.

Check the internal SAS wiring between the 410i and the expander card. Verify that there are two cables between the expander card and the 410i and two cables between the expander card and the drive cages. The expander card is like a LAN switch. It has uplink ports (to the 410i) and downlink ports to the drive cages.

It looks like the ports are designated in pairs. Take a look at this cabling diagram

http://docs.hp.com/en/AH233-9003B/ch05s04.html?btnPrev=%AB%A0prev

The two bottom ports are uplinks to the 410i. The other six ports are downlinks to the drive cages.
Look carefully on the bottom of the page. The pairs that go to the drive cages are paired in rows, (top row, second row and third row to the drive cages, fourth row to the 410i), ensure that is the way they are wired. (it is easily confusing to use the two ports behind the large chip as one pair and the other two all the way in the back of the card as another). Look for any port numbering on the card as well. Sometimes the documentation may be wrong.

Was this server shipped like that from the HP factory or a reseller?

[TTr]

One more thing to check is that the 410i has 256MB of cache as mentioned in the Q&A link above.
By the way this storage setup is good for low to medium i/o demand, it is ideal for an archive environment. Don't expect screaming i/o. And since you did not combine all the drives, you should have opted for additional 410 raid cards to drive the disk cages.

[Kopp2]

I checked the wiring, it was ok. Two cables for each cage.

Finally I was able to solve this issue via installing new firmware for HP SAS Expander card (v. 1.52)!
Strange, that this update was not a part of firmware CD 8.60.

Anyway, thx @ all!

[jay dogg]

Hi, I have a very similar issue.

I have a DL380 G6 that I'm installing a SAS expander into.

My SMH version is 3.0.2.77 and the information is shown correctly. Only one drive per slot. In ACU ver. 8.35.7 the drives show up as:

146 GB 2-Port SAS Drive at Port 4C : Box 2 : Bay 1
146 GB 2-Port SAS Drive at Port 4C : Box 2 : Bay 1
146 GB 2-Port SAS Drive at Port 4C : Box 2 : Bay 2
146 GB 2-Port SAS Drive at Port 4C : Box 2 : Bay 2


I've updated the SAS Expander to ver. 1.52.
I'm using Drives EG0146FARTR ver. HPD4
System ROM is P62 06/20/2009
P410i version v.1.66
PSP installed is 8.30
Even ran the firmware maintence cd 8.60 to update everything else.

Cage 1 (my boot drives) show up just fine in all the tools available.

146 GB 2-Port SAS Drive at Port 2C : Box 1 : Bay 1
146 GB 2-Port SAS Drive at Port 3C : Box 1 : Bay 5
146 GB 2-Port SAS Drive at Port 2C : Box 1 : Bay 4 (Shared Spare)
146 GB 2-Port SAS Drive at Port 3C : Box 1 : Bay 8 (Shared Spare)

The product number of the upgrade is 516914-B21 for the drive cage. And the upgrade product number for the SAS expander card is 468406-B21.

OS is Windows 2003 sp2.

Any help would be appreciated.

thanks,
Jeff

[Jonas Back_2]

Have the same problem with the SAS Expander Card. Any ideas?

The drives in cage 1 shows up just fine but the ones in cage 2 shows up twice in HP Array Configurator. However, in BIOS it doesn't show up twice.

I also updated to 1.52(B).

The disks we bought:
507127-B21
HP 300GB 6G SAS 10K SFF DP ENT HDD

[Jonas Back_2]

Just to let everyone know that I also had to do a firmware update of the P410i. Latest current version 2.50:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=3884082&prodNameId=3884083&swEnvOID=1113&swLang=13&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-21a4b0990517492c80ee7cd24a

This solved it for me!

And while you're at it, update the firmwares of the disks.