LH6000, intergrated netraid, cache, RAM

[Dmitry Melekhov_2]

Hello!

I have very strange situation:
I have lh6000r with integrated
megaraid.
System has 4Gb of RAM (512*8).
Navigator shows that there is 4 Gb of RAM, 4 banks with 1Gb each.
But I saw only 3.8Gb during BIOS
boot and in OS (Linux).
After I changed cache RAM of raid controller from 32Mb to 128Mb I see only 3.6Gb of system RAM (in BIOS and OS)!!!

I can't understand how can raid controller cache increasing eat system RAM?

[Enes Dizdarevic · Accepted solution]

This is well known problem. You can read readme file for your server from Netserver Navigator for detailed explanation. Unfortunally there is no solution for it now.

[Dmitry Melekhov_2]

:(
I wanted to buy Compaq ML570...
But HP gived us good discount...
I had to buy Compaq....

Thank you!

[Marco Hogeveen]

Dmitri,

What's the Firmware of the onboard Netraid controller?
Make sure it's E.01.04 or later, this reduces the memory hole.
Please note that all modern servers will have some form of memory hole. The new NetRAID firmware and BIOS will only reduce the HP memory hole to be of comparable size to their competitors.

Marco.

[Dmitry Melekhov_2]

Thank you!

I received this 2 servers yesterday and they have latest firmware. As you see I lost 400 Mbs from 4Gb. This is very bad, especially for our applications (SAP R/3)...

[Marino Meloni_1]

Hi
here is a HP document who expalin something:


HP Netservers - Memory Not Fully Reported
Public
Some hp netservers (lh 3000/r, lh 6000/r, or lt 6000r) with memory greater than 3.3 GB may report missing memory. This NewsFlash supercedes ???Memory Hole??? Systems not reporting full RAM installed.

Issue

On systems with more than 3.3 GB of memory installed, memory between the addresses of 3.3 GB and 4 GB (approximately) will appear to be missing from the system. For instance, if a customer installs four 1 GB DIMMs into an hp lt 6000r, only about 3,311 MB will be reported to the system. Customers with more than 4 GB installed may see a similar loss of about 700 MB.



Scope

This problem affects customers that have the embedded NetRAID controller enabled in BIOS.

Early versions of the NetRAID-2m card may exhibit a similar problem, but this can be fixed by upgrading the firmware, as described below. No other NetRAID plug-in cards have this problem.
The HP neterver lc 2000 is NOT subject to this problem, since it has no embedded NetRAID card.

Solution

Update the embedded (integrated) NetRAID firmware to E.01.04, or later. This can be obtained from the web:
http://www.hp.com/cposupport/servers/software/fwnri_us.exe.html
or the L.20.00 or later Navigator CD. The system BIOS must also be updated.
Details
Cause
This is caused by inefficient memory claims by the embedded NetRAID firmware, combined with problems with the memory allocation algorithm in the system BIOS. The size of the memory hole is dependent on the cache size used on the NetRAID as it gets mapped to system memory. The new NetRAID firmware claims much less memory. To get maximum system memory, use only 32 MB of cache for the NetRAID.

Please note that all modern servers will have some form of memory hole. The new NetRAID firmware and BIOS will only reduce the HP memory hole to be of comparable size to our competitors.

Affected systems
hp netserver lh 3000/lh 3000r
hp netserver lh 6000/lh 6000r
hp netserver lt 6000r
Affected accessories
hp memory

Affected network operating systems
All

[Dmitry Melekhov_2]

Thanks to all.
Now I know that this is HP hardware problem
and there is no way to solve it.
But I can't understand why there is no
info about this problem is server description
for customers on hp.com.
There is only info that server supports 8 RAM
and 7.3 Gb can be used.
Also, HP engineer, who recommended me this
configuration said nothing about this problem.
Now I have server with with 3.6Gb of RAM instead of 4Gb I wanted to have.
And I payed for 4Gb of RAM ( I don't care that
this RAM really exists if I can't use it).
I never heared about such type of problem before, becuase I never used built-in raid
controllers.
IMHO, HP sold me not what I needed and I'll try
to solve this problem.
Unfortunately, I can't return this hardware to HP, because I waited _this_ :-/ 8 weeks...
May be I'll return RAM which I can't use...