HP DL370 G6 Overheated SATA Drives

[TiTi65]

No one firmware resolved issue yet ?

[jaredhallen]

I have 3 hp dl380 servers - a G5, a G6, and a G7, each with 8 of the Seagate ST9500420AS drives mentioned, and all running vmware ESXi 4.1. All three have always reported an overheated condition on POST, although due to the different iLO versions (version 1 for the G5, version 2 for the G6, and version 3 on the new G7), the two older machines have always coped with the issue, albeit with the fans running at excessive levels as noted on this thread.

The G7, however, has been a different story. We got the machine last fall, and have periodically experienced exactly the same thing mentioned by the original poster - vmware virtual machines would suddenly stop responding (although the machine itself would still be accessible, probably because I was running vmware off an SD card).

After I found this thread, I did a little digging on the Seagate drive and found this:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=203971

Basically, Seagate puts it's own proprietary information into the S.M.A.R.T. values on it's drives, causing them to be misinterpreted by third party tools (ie HP System Health Monitor).

Then I found this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/547122-seagate-st9500420as-firmware-update.html

Which links to a firmware for this drive provided by Dell. The flash utility by default doesn't want to flash the generic drives because it doesn't recognize them as Dell drives, but there is a workaround explained in the post.

At any rate, I had the G7 server down already because of this problem, so I figured I'd give it a try. I flashed all 8 of it's drives, and booted it back up. iLO now reports a storage status of "Not Installed" rather than 63 degrees. The fans are running nice and quiet, as would be expected. If all goes well, I think I'll flash all the rest of the drives for good measure.

[Louis Henninger_1]

I don't normally respond to this kind of "HP Bashing", but why would anyone think that any vendor (HP, Dell, IBM, etc.) have to provide fixes for a customer who chooses not to buy options/disks/NICs/ whatever for use in their servers. No vendor suggests, implies, or otherwise states their server is fully compatible with ALL OEM/third-party vendors hardware in the market today. The only thing HP has control of is their marketed options. If those have a problem I would expect HP to make it right. Dell doesn't support non-Dell options anymore than IBM will support non-IBM options. Why would anyone think otherwise?   I think you still get what you pay for... Cheaper disks will not save you money in the long run.

Regards,

Louis

[calsawyer]

Running across this thread gave me a bit of a scare as i have 3 new Seagate SATA 500GB HDDs i was intending to set up as a second RAID5 LV.  Drives are enterpise-class Constellation.2 ST9500620NS.  Loaded one up today in a spare slot on a DL360 G6 and checked fans via IPMI and drive temp readings via hpacucli. All good and as quiet as before i installed the drive.  I believe the moral of the story is: "Don't use desktop (ie: AS-series) HDDs in a server" - not only for sake of compatibility but also disk lifespan.

FYI:

      physicaldrive 1I:1:4
         Port: 1I
         Box: 1
         Bay: 4
         Status: OK
         Drive Type: Data Drive
         Interface Type: SATA
         Size: 500 GB
         Firmware Revision: SN01
         Serial Number:             9XF06JJS
         Model: ATA     ST9500620NS
         SATA NCQ Capable: True
         SATA NCQ Enabled: True
         Current Temperature (C): 30
         Maximum Temperature (C): 52
         PHY Count: 1
         PHY Transfer Rate: 3.0GBPS

[AndyDxxxx]

So after about 2 years of discussion,, is there a way around this?

I have a ML350 G6 and I have just put 2 NON HP drives in it, and yes it sounds like it wants to take off

Fans are far too fast and noisy!

Is there a way to resolve this and slow the fans down?

[comfine]

we have the same problem and no solution. HP does know very well of this problem, but will not provide a solution, as they want to sell their "own" relabeled much more expensive hard-drives....thank you HP. same on fujitsu-siemens, and probaply many other manufacturers. however, if hp will not help us - and they will not, i'm sure - this was my last HP server i buy for my customer...

[dbdata]

2015 and the problem seems to remain.  

I take exception to the gentleman that called this thread "HP bashing."  Please keep in mind that the web page and specs for the P410 clearly state that they support SAS and SATA drives.  Nowhere in the advertising literature does it say "HP Brand SAS and SATA drives."   My point here that the person who goes out and buys 4 Hitachi SATA drives and expects them to work in a card cage and with a controller that are both advertised to support "sata drives" is not horribly out of line.

That said, it's not the P410 controller since it clearly works w/3rd party drives out in the real world.  The problem is the BIOS firmware that attempts to read the temp and set the fans accordingly.   An option in the firmware to override/ignore this setting doesn't seem to me to be out of line.

Now ... why would HP make the effort to support 3rd party drives in this manner?  Presumably because selling chassis and card cages and memory and power supplies is something they enjoy doing.   They like selling service packs, too and come to think of it, they REALLY like selling license keys to get Raid6 capabilities that come standard in older controllers. 

There was a time when it was a proprietary world.  Many of us made much more money back then.  But the days of HP/UX are gone and it we're going to live in a standards-driven world then HP should fix the problem, publish a list of 3rd party drives that work, or wonder why and how some of their long time loyal customers are taking another look at Dell.

I was playing around with an old G6/P400 server last week and accidentally discovered this problem when we upgraded it to a P410 and after seeing that there is no acceptable solution we placed an order for a dozen G8's on hold while we sort it out.

In the overall scheme of things if the total  number of people with this problem go elsewhere, HP wouldn't feel the bump.   This was something they should have fixed simply because it was an oversite on their part in the first place.

So now the actual question -- has anyone checked the rest of the HP Array controllers?  Is this specific to the P410 or is it HP-wide?

[TonySykes]

Sept 2016 and I still haven't seen a soluition for this. Am I to assume that we need new firmware and bios that could fix this issue? If this is the case we would need Service Contracts. I personally do not have a service contract due to this being a server I purchased second hand for a home lab. Is there somewhere for people like me to get the upgrades we need? Or is HP equipment something home users should avoid and buy Dell or something else? I personally think this is a big issue as home labs are getting more and more prevelant and some companies are not helping this user base. Having a bad experince here could be perceived as what to expect in the support from the company and turn people off a particular product (HP in this case) for future work. You don't want people who can have a say in a hardware purchase harbouring ill feeling against a product due to a bad experience like this. Make a thriving home lab/hobbiest area to help support users like me and other people on this thread and make the company stand out. Think of all the good free press. However to this current problem we have, myslef included are we just to write off our sata purchases or the server purchase? God forbid I have a memory error and I have to replace a stick of that.

[shuck]

There's a reason the second hand market is flooded with HP servers that are all really cheap.  I'm figuring this out the hard way.  I thought I was getting a decent pair of servers for my rack.  What I have purchased is a support nightmare that sounds like a jet engine when I try to use anything that doesn't have the HP label on it and marked up 400%.  IT pros have been dumping HP hardware left and right since 2014 when they implemented their pay-only BIOS/firmware model.

[DeepBlu]

I think I have found some significant information to all of us trying to find a solution to overheating 3rd party drives.

http://dascomputerconsultants.com/HPCompaqServerDrives.htm

I hope this helps.

[AllanThomsen]

I also have fans running wild after installing 2 x 2 TB Seagate Guardian BarraCuda on a HPE DL380 gen9. For the main drives i installed 2 x 1 TB Samsung 850 EVO MZ-75E1T0 SSD without having fan issues.

[Kirrah]

Same issue with DL380G7 and Seagate Barracuda. FANs are spinning like crazy.

But WD Blue 1TB hard disks work in the same server without problems. As mentioned in the earlier replies, you must be prepared to have spare hard disks as replacements since desktop HDDs are lower quality. From 7 disks of WD blue, already 2 disks went broken in 2 years.

[ronhix]

Thank you DeepBlu. The information on this site (http://dascomputerconsultants.com/HPCompaqServerDrives.htm) is super useful. I have a DL380 g9 with a P440ar controller and was getting the overheat error with the same model seagate drives. The model was the same (ST40000LM024) but the version was different (2AN1 vs 2U81). Now I know not to buy any 2U81 versions.