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Re: MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

 
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Bretttt
Occasional Advisor

MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

Hi all,

I'm troubleshooting what I think might be a fault with the SCSI HBA I'm using. I've got an MSL6030 with 2 x Ultrium960 drives in it, plugged into a LSI22320-HP card (dual port U320 card) on a Proliant DL380G4 running Win2K3 SP1.

Bus A is cabled to Drive 0 (with the library controller daisychained), while bus B is connected to drive 1. Terminators correctly installed etc, and the 3 devices detect fine in Windows.

Here's where the fun begins:

Drive 1 (in Bus B) is working like a charm.
Drive 0 on the other hand, craps out after anywhere between 50 and 200mb of data transfer. I've tried the following in narrowing down what the cause may be:

- swapped the LTO3 drives around. No difference - which ever drive is daisychained to the library is the one which fails.

- swapped SCSI cables, terminators, etc. No difference.

- Swapped ports on the back of the LSI22320-HP. (No difference.)

I've got an open call on this problem at the moment, and one of the bits of advice I was given was to daisychain all 3 drives onto one port and see what happens. Suprisingly, the problem disappears - except now one single U320 channel is now supporting both LTO3 drives. My preference is obviously to split the two drives up across both channels.

I did a bit more digging. As we're using an 6400 smartarray controller instead of the on-board 6i, I decided to try the external onboard VHDC port as the host for the drive which is daisychained to the lib controller, and guess what? It works. Its also slow as HELL, so is therefore not a solution to my problem. It has however shifted my focus from a termination type issue with the library, to being something related to the card.

Oh, I also trained the MaximumSGList value down to 65 (default block size for drives = 64), but its made no difference.

Any ideas?

Brett

8 REPLIES 8
Bretttt
Occasional Advisor

Re: MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

Forgot to mention - am running DataProtector 5.5, and the error is the usual "Cannot write to device ([1117] The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. )" message...
Dmitry_75
Valued Contributor

Re: MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

Hi!

MB

To resolve this issue, updated HBA firmware and an updated HBA driver must be downloaded and installed. These updates can be performed by a customer.

Driver and HBA Firmware http://www.lsilogic.com/support
Marino Meloni_1
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

I have seen cases where this problem disapeared if you connect the HBA to the Controller first then daisy chain with the LTO3 and then put the terminator.
Thanks to let us know if this work for you too
Marino
Bretttt
Occasional Advisor

Re: MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

Thanks for the replies guys. I think I've got the latest firmware and driver (from LSI's support website). I'll double check this when I'm back at work on Monday.

The daisychain order thing sounds promising, will let you know how it goes!

Thanks again,
Brett
Bretttt
Occasional Advisor

Re: MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

Thanks Marino, that nailed it. Both drives are now screaming along.

Is there a (legitimate) technical reason for this scenario? I'll admit to being a little rusty on my SCSI, but I would've thought the SCSI ID of the library and the drive (and their order on the bus) shouldn't have affected things the way they did!

If you're ever in Australia, hit me up for a beer or 20. 10pts doesn't seem enough.

Cheers,
Brett
abcxyz
Frequent Advisor

Re: MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

Hi Brett,

I am facing similar problem MSL 6030 with 2 Ultrium 960 drives . Which ever drive i connect to slot 0 backup fails and drive also failes read write test on slot0. Its connected through single channel U320 card.

Please let me know what was the final solution in your case.
Alberto Vidal
Advisor

Re: MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

I suppossed it's the same for me.

I have two LTO-3 drives at the same daisy chain and only one works. For the other one I have the 1117 error
Marino Meloni_1
Honored Contributor

Re: MSL6030 (2xUltrium960) vs Ultra320 dual port LSI card

Alberto,

only one LTO3 can be attached at the scsi bus at one time, you need two HBA, or a dual channel scsi HBA in order to manage two LTO3.
This is also valid for a Fibbre Channel connected device, you should attach only one LTO 3 drive per scsi channel.