Tape drive not recognised after Hot Spare Hard Drive added

[Russell Healey]

MP Proliant ML350 G5 server - we added a 5th drive to our RAID 1+0 array and successfully added it as a hot spare. As a result, the Quantum DLT-V4 tape drive (connected to the onboard SATA controller) is not recognised and does not show up in device manager. We have this on two identical servers. So far, we have removed the drive, powered the server up again...powered down and reconnected the tape drive.. Powered up just in case this would reset the device id. There are not settings on the tape drive apart from a SCSI jumper (but this is a SATA drive!) On one occasion, the tape drive did re-appear in device manger on one of the servers. Is there a conflict possible here between the hot-spare in the RAID and the tape drive. Thanks in advance.

[TTr]

> we added a 5th drive to our RAID 1+0

Is that a SAS or a SATA drive? Internal?

Do you have the E200i controller or something else?

> Quantum DLT-V4 tape drive (connected to the onboard SATA controller) ... not settings on the tape drive apart from a SCSI jumper (but this is a SATA drive!)

This does not make sense. The DLT drives are very old and they are usually SCSI. I doudt this one has SATA interface. It might have SAS interface but it would have to be a LTO drive not DLT.

You need to provide more specific details here about what you have installed, controllers, disks, tape, interfaces etc.

[Russell Healey]

Sorry for the imprecision...

>Is that a SAS or a SATA drive? Internal?
The Hard Drive we added inserts (in a caddy) into one of the 6 bays on the bottom of the server these connect via an edge connector on the motherboard.

>Do you have the E200i controller or something else?
It is using the E200i controller.

>This does not make sense. The DLT drives are very old >and they are usually SCSI. I doudt this one has SATA >interface. It might have SAS interface but it would have >to be a LTO drive not DLT.

It is definitely an internal Quantum DLT-V4 - Perhaps then it is SCSI after all - it uses a red cable that looks like SATA though and there is only one place on the board (a single header) where it will go.

I'll have to double check with the network manager...
Sorry (!)

[Russell Healey]

To confirm: The internal tape drive is definitely SATA - the manual also shows the (redundant?) jumpers (without any label) for the SATA version of the tape drive. The manual shows the two connectors that we have as SATA also. [The section of the manual for the SCSI version shows a different connector panel].

The 5 hard drives sit in the SAS/SATA hard-drive bank (as the server manual calls it).

If both the hard-drives and the Quantum DLT-V4 use SATA is there a possibility of conflict. We couldn't find anything in the BIOS...
Thanks again.

[TTr]

Take a look at the motherboard diagram on page 11 of the user guide.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/CoreRedirect.jsp?redirectReason=DocIndexPDF&prodSeriesId=1121586&targetPage=http%3A%2F%2Fbizsupport2.austin.hp.com%2Fbc%2Fdocs%2Fsupport%2FSupportManual%2Fc00709040%2Fc00709040.pdf

The disk drive cage has 2 SAS/SATA connectors which plug in to the E200i connectors on the motherboard, connectors #9 and #10.

The tape drive is probably using the single connector on the motherboard #12 (which is normally used by the DVD/CD drive).

It is not mentioned anywhere in the manual but it is possible that the extra SATA connector #12 is routed to one of the 8 ports of the E200i controller. Only if this is true you would have a hardware conflict with one of the slots in the drive cage.

Where did you plug in the extra disk? Is it easy to unconfigure it from hot spare and pull it from the drive slot? That would prove there is a conflict.

I do remember seeing something where port 1 of the SAS controller was routed to be used by a tape drive connection and that meant one less disk connected to the raid controller. I could not find any references to this for the ML350.

[Russell Healey]

Sorry for not getting back earlier and thanks for the helpful reply with the link to the diagram.

We have 5 drives in the cage (6 total) which is indeed connected to connectors #9 and #10 on the motherboard diagram. Indeed, the tape drive is plugged into #12.

Sounds like we have a conflict then. We could deactivate the hot spare and remove it and see whether the tape drive comes back. Could we plug the hot spare into bay number 6 (currently unused) or would it still get the same SATA id?

[Presumably the jumpers on the back of the tape drive are redundant and won't influence the i/d]

If it is the case that we have a conflict, then do we have any other options, other than getting a separate SATA board for the tape drive?
Thanks again

[TTr]

As I said earlier, I vaguely remember the port 1 sharing connectors for disk or tape usage but for another server, not for this one. Unfortunately there is no details in the manual anywhere. I would unconfigure and remove the hot spare, if the conflict goes away there is a port 1 sharing on the two connectors.
After that, I think it would be safe to use disk slot #6 for the disk, the port IDs are assigned to the specific disk slots.