SCSI chain termination on D370/K370

[Ralph Grothe]

Hi,

because service span of several of the above mentioned servers has exceeded they are now to be returned to HP at our site.
Together with the servers leave a few disk racks which on the other hand had SCSI chain links to servers that still remain with us.
When I erased the servers to be sent back, and disconnected all links I made sure that the opened sockets at the disk enclosures on the servers/racks that remain in service where supplied with differential terminator resistors.
But the termination of the SCSI chain doesn't seem to work, for now the servers that stay won't boot anymore because IPL cannot find a bootable device.
I noticed that the bootdisks from vg00 where at the end of the SCSI chain, which I thought to have terminated correctly.
Could it be that an explitit controller termination is required from within the GSP?
(I haven't found such a menu entry, but remember that there are sections only accessible to HP service personnel)

[Eugeny Brychkov · Accepted solution]

Ralph,
D-class FWD adapter, if residing at the end of SCSI bus, should be properly terminated, see http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x55a13a1c04ffd61190050090279cd0f9,00.html .
K-class usually has termination turned on at the card (except MFIO HBA - Core IO built-in HBA - connect active terminator).
FWD terminator is A1658-62024.
Check bus length <25m, cables' quality, bent pins, etc
Eugeny

[Stefan Farrelly]

Ive never heard of anything you need to in the GSP. Its simply a hardware problem - SCSI cable problem, bent pin, even a faulty drive can cause the search option to not see any of the devices on that path. Only way to solve is to isolate each device one at a time and redo the search until you locate the faulty item.

[Vicente Sanchez_3]

Check for duplicate scsi address.

Check for broken scsi cable pin.

Check the cable and terminator conectros.

Regards, Vicente.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

If talking about newer HP machines (N4000, for example), PDC allows only change SCSI Id and rate of SCSI card. As I understood from docs external built-in N4000 SCSI card is self-terminated. But if you have addon card please refer to its manual
Eugeny

[harry d brown jr]

Ralph,

You are 140 responses behind: http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/TopSolutions/1,,BR149499!1!questions,00.html

live free or die
harry

[Steve Boniwell]

Check terminators are right type - I had a problem on one site where they had used SE 68pin terminators instead of FWD 68 pin terminators.

[Brian M Rawlings]

Ralph: Both the K- and D-class servers you mention have internal disk bays, which may or may not contain drives. You can see any drives by opening the front door of either box (in the K370, any drives are behind a metal mesh, but you can see them if you look, up to four are possible).

If you have internal drives (any), it is easier to troubleshoot SCSI issues. On the K370, you remove any external SCSI cable from the built-in SCSI port on the M/F card, and move a terminator from an external chassis to the SCSI port on the M/F card. On D370, do the same, but remove cables from all SCSI cards in the I/O chassis, and terminate them all (in case the boot drives aren't on the usual SCSI card).

Then power on and do 'sea' to see if any bootable devices show up. If they do, you have a working bus, and you can add external items one at a time to troubleshoot each in its turn (use the same terminator that worked on the chassis itself).

If you don't have any internal drives, things are more complicated, as you try to locate the bad/incorrect part of the bus. Basically, in the K370, you should connect up one SCSI cable to the M/F built-in FWD SCSI port, and run it to your external disk chassis. If this is a HASS (8 hot-swap slots), note that there is a right side (four slots) and a left side (four slots), and these are not connected within the box. So, you would run the cable to, say, the left side at the bottom, then terminate the left side at the top. Then power on an try 'sea' to check for drives.

Likewise, on the D370, you should connect the HASS (or other chassis) to one of your SCSI cards, and then terminate the HASS as above (on the same side as the incoming cable). Power on and use 'sea' to see if any drives show up.

If they don't, you now have to move things around, one at a time. Try a different cable, different terminator, or move to the other side of the HASS. Make sure there is only one drive in the left and right sides of the HASS chassis, to eliminate duplicate SCSI IDs as an issue.

If the external disk chassis is an older 6000-series (you can see four drives looking out the front, no hot-swap), you will want to check all the SCSI ID switches to make sure none are duplicates, which can keep it from booting.

As someone pointed out, there are 68-pin terminators that are NOT FWD (HVD). They normally say "LVD", "LVD/SE", or "Multimode" on them. Unfortunately, the correct HVD/FWD terminators are the originals, and therefore don't say anything (or may have the P/N noted above for FWD terms).

If you have an HP support contract, you might call and get some help from them, this is easier to describe if you are on a phone call (there are just so many ways this can vary, and so many ways it can be goofed up...)

Hope this helps... good luck!

--bmr