ProLiant XL420 Gen10 (Apollo 4200 Gen10) - Drive Failure Frequency

[sgunelius]

I'm posting this again because while the issue isn't as frequent, we still regularly experience drives failing or marked predictive fail on the Apollo 4200 Gen10 (ProLiant XL420 Gen10); 14 cases in the last 3 months, over 100 cases in the last 2 years.  No long-term solution has been forthcoming from HPE.

We have 85 of these servers, most are 2-4 years old, have the latest SPP applied, running latest System ROM, firmware for the HPE Smart Array P816i-a SR Gen10 controller, drive firmware for the (2) 2TB and (26) 10TB LFF SAS HDDs.

Almost every issue is associated with HPE Model MB10000JWRTE (ST1000NM0528) and if it were isolated to a specific set of servers, I'd consider replacement of the backplane or something else.  These servers are equipped with the HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 4LFF Rear Drive Cage Kit (P07943-B21); so we've got bays 1-2 (2TB RAID1 for OS), bays 3-24 & 49-50 supporting 4 (6x10TB RAID5 for data) and bays 51-52 as 10TB Global Hot Spares.

Apollo 4200 Gen10 is now End of Sale and the HPE Alletra Storage Server 4120 has become the replacement, but I'm curious to know if anyone else has experienced similar failure rates or if this issue persists in the Alletra 4120.  Thank you and happy holidays.

Scott

[Greeshma21]

Hi @sgunelius 

Please take a look at this troubleshooting guide, It might be helpful.

Regards, 
Greeshma

[BPSingh]

Greeting!

For this issue, media-related errors should be examined, particularly on the drive model MB010000JWRTE. I recommend collecting the AHS logs and opening a support case for further investigation.

[sgunelius]

Thank you for the reply, but after 100+ cases, over 2 years, on different Apollo 4200 Gen10 under Complete Care with HPE, I've provided both ADU reports and AHS logs for each case.

There's been no resolution forthcoming from HPE support; I was more curious if other HPE customers also running the Apollo 4200 Gen10 with LFF SAS HDDs had experienced similar frequent failures/predictive failures with the MB010000JWRTE.

[sgunelius]

Greeshma,

Thank you for your reply, but wouldn't you think after 100+ cases in 2 years across our 85 Apollo 4200 Gen10s, someone from HPE support would've isolated the issue.  I've asked our HPE service rep to review the case histories of failed/predictive fail HDDs and see if there's any correlation between a particular range of serial numbers to determine if there might be a manufacturing defect of drive backplane that might be the root cause.

While I appreciate you pointing me to a support document, I was really hoping to hear if other customers were experiencing similar issues with the Apollo 4200 Gen10 equipped with LFF SAS HDDs.  Thank you again.