HP DL370 G6 Overheated SATA Drives

[chadtandy]

Hi, we've recently purchased 2x HP Proliant DL370 G6 servers, we loaded them up with 146GB 10k SAS drives from HP, but on one of the servers we ordered 8 Seagate 500 GB 2.5" drives and drive carriers from an outside vendor (HP just charges too much for SATA drives... SCSI drives are fairly priced though).
Anyway we frequently receive Error 1717 and 1784 in Lights Out only for the SATA drives and then lose connection to them in VMWare at times. All the fans are running (even turned them up to maximum in BIOS) and the hard drives are never even warm to the touch.
I'm thinking this is an issue with a false positive error... The drives are Seagate ST9500420AS drives.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
-Chad

[juan quesada]

might be drivers timing out.

please attach ADU report to find the root cause of the failure

[chadtandy]

Not sure how to HP ADU report, I'm running VMWare vSphere 4 ESX.

-Chad

[juan quesada]

reboot the server, boot from smartstart, go to maintenance, array diagnostic utility.

....

[chadtandy]

I receive a warning on all drives: Drive does not support a DST log on this configuration.

-Chad

[chadtandy]

Also attached is the ADU report.

-Chad

[Erdogan Temur]

Hi Chad,

System and controller card firmware version ?

The following steps to control:

POST Error: 1717-Slot z Drive Array Controller - Disk Drive(s) Reporting OVERHEATED Condition

Possible Cause: The array drives listed in this message are currently in an overheated state.
Action: Action: Check the fans and be sure the air flows over the drive. Install the access panel, if removed.

and;

POST Error: 1784-Slot X Array Controller is in lock-up state due to a hardware configuration failure. (Controller is disabled until this issue is resolved.)

Possible Cause: One or more hardware subsystems failed to initialize properly.

Action: Reboot the server. If the issue still exists and a cache memory module is attached to the controller, replace the cache memory module and reboot the server.

Regards.

[peterjlloyd]

I am experiencing exactly the same problem with a DL360 G6 (SA P410i)

Initially with the same Seagate Momentus 7200.4 drives (only the 320Gb version) that Chad is trying to use.

Suspecting an unusual incompatability I switched to Hitachi HTS5450509A300 500Gb drive but have exactly the same problem with them.

The Samsung PB22-J solid state drives behave as expected.

All firmware is at latest versions.

Hitachi diagnostics show the drives at a constant 17 degrees but the P410i firmware reports 1717 overheated.

Please help, thanks
Peter

[peterjlloyd · Accepted solution]

UPDATE: Having tried a few more models I've found a couple that work as expected.

Samsung HM320JI (SATA-150 320Gb 5400)
Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVT (SATA-300 320Gb 5400)

My requirements and testing budget doesn't extend to 500Gb.

This obviously isn't an isolated incident, does anyone from HP maintain a list of compatible parts or is the official line just to pay through the nose for the branded product?

[George M Porter]

I believe that the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 drives do not have any temperature sensors at all in them (for some drives I had lying around on another machine, smartctl told me there was no such sensor. So the firmware in the p410 controller could just erroneously report that as 'overheat'. Given that the alarm in the controller is something like 63C, I think you would know if they were actually overheating.

That is the major downside to using consumer-grade drives, is that their firmware typically doesn't support most extended features/S.M.A.R.T. registers.

[chadtandy]

That would make sense that that model of Seagate drives has no temp sensor. Sometimes the error goes away and other times it is on. I'm just ignoring it, otherwise the drives are running great.

Thanks all,
-Chad

[Robotic Fusion Monkey]

I can confirm that I'm having the same problem.

Server: DL 380G6
Controller: P410s
Drives: Seagate ST9500420AS
Firmware: 0002SDM1

I'm wondering if there's a firmware that can be put onto the drives that'll fix this issue... (if only to just lie and return a valid temperature)

Thanks,
Tim.

[Sorb]

We have two servers with the same specification as Robotic Fusion Monkey above.

Server: DL 380G6
Controller: P410i
Drives: Seagate ST9500420AS
Firmware: 0002SDM1

We had this problem back in March and we were forced to buy very expensive HP original drives to solve it. After that the servers are very quiet and the fans are no longer working at the maximum speed which made the servers sound like rocket engines before.

I also contacted Seagate Tech Support back then but they made all kinds of excuses and denied any problem. They also said there was no firmware update available. Unfortunately I didn't have any time to bitch back on them so we had to reside to buy the HP drives :(

[Vladimir S.]

Hy all,

same exact issue on HP DL 360 G6 with
Seagate 500G ST9500420ASG

Any idea how to get around it, not sure that it can be turn off in bios... becasue sometimes it looks like that server will take off, so much noise and fans are at 80% all the time :( I really don't wont to buy HP disks which cost more that the server...

I'm quite unhappy about the situation..

Vladimir.

[Sorb]

Yes we are all quite unhappy about this I'd say. HP and Seagate really knows how to screw you over...

One thing I never tried though was to use one of the harddrives that peterjlloyd tested above. It seemed to me that the server would only work properly when it can read the special firmware that HP loads on their super expensive drives.

In my desperation I even tried to remove some of the fans from the enclosure to make it more quiet but the server refused to run without them. I think HP planned this really good...

[TiTi65]

Same problems with DL360 G7 and SSD C300...
Visibly, no problem on DL180 with hitachi 2Tb drives...

Latest firmware does'nt change anything. (P410 say -6°C but overheat . . .)

[Michael A. McKenney]

Did you verify the firmware on the drives match? Check the fans in the server to make sure none of them failed. Does the room have proper cooling that this server is in. Are the drives installed properly? You need proper airflow to the PCB boards. Does HP support those drives on that controller?

HP does charge alot for components because they are designed for the server to function properly. I would get their drive cage and see if your problem is resolved. It is designed to work with the air flow of the server.

[TiTi65]

Hi, thanks for reply,

Did you verify the firmware on the drives match? Check the fans in the server to make sure none of them failed. Does the room have proper cooling that this server is in. Are the drives installed properly? You need proper airflow to the PCB boards. Does HP support those drives on that controller?

HP does charge alot for components because they are designed for the server to function properly. I would get their drive cage and see if your problem is resolved. It is designed to work with the air flow of the server.

Firmwares are up to date.
Fans are OK (they go slow if I remove the HDD).
Room is at 20°C stable (cooled and regulated).
Drives installed, I think, properly.

HP doesn't support theses drives.
The HDD doesn't go hot, never.

thanks again...

[Vladimir S.]

This is not an issue of drives... HP use seagate drivers just with custom firmware as far as I know.. they are no different from other ones... this is issue with HP bios not supporting other drives temp sensors or lack of it...

Solution for this is none so far... just to ignore that message in log ...

[TiTi65]

Ok,

I was thinking to some kind of this . .. :(.
It's not a problem, but fans are at 80% instead of 18/20% . . .

[Vladimir S.]

I know, as I have exact same issue on my server... but nothing that can be done, either to take out some of the fans, or put potentiometer on fans to tune it down manually...

But it would not get much work to fix it in Bios for developers.. just put two options in there..one to control if it should read temperature from HDD and second to set manually speed for fans.. but HP will not do it :-/

[TiTi65]

Sure !

[Michael A. McKenney]

The issue could be the enclosure backplane from non-HP components is not communicating with the server properly. The firmware on the drives and controller backplane could be causing the misreading. The enclosure backplane does a lot more than just setting IDs.

I had Supermicro SCSI SCA enclosures at home. They worked perfectly for 3 years. One day, all the drives started to fail in cascade. LSI Logic checked the controller and replaced it. I replaced the backplane PCB boards. I never was able to get it working properly again. Something in the backplane did not like the firmware on the controller. I ended up removing the enclosures and upgrading to SAS RAID.

HP is not fairly priced. However, if you want a server to function properly and be supported, you use HP parts. You don't get Seagate drives, you use HP drives. I have one server running Axiom HP memory. Memory does not have firmware. Hard drives, controllers, and cards use only HP. The problem is most like the communication with the backplane in the non-HP enclosure.

HP does neuter their hardware. I have an LSI Logic SCSI controller and an identical HP SCSI controller. Same PCB layout. The difference is the firmware and BIOS. LSI Logic full feature set and HP has two features.

[TiTi65]

I think (for me) backplane doesn't do anything in more.

Only firmware could explain this.

Firmware must be tagged "HP" or it won work . . .

[iron]

Drives that have had no problem on P410/i in either dl360 g6 or dl380 g7 are

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000BLHX 600 GB
Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 160GB

However the same machines have the overheat issue with WD scorpio black 750gb