R620 and HBA - tips?

Hmmm. I'm just now thinking... are you in BIOS boot mode, or UEFI boot mode?

The servers can do either, so maybe switch from whichever one you're currently in to the other one and try that?
 
Updating iDRAC isn't something I've personally done before, as the Ebay vendor I got mine from had gone through and done it already.

In my reading of stuff while learning though, it seemed like even finding the .iso with the updates was a bit hit or miss as the Dell website might not even have them any more (?).

What's the process you used?


On a different topic, apparently it's possible to get (generated?) iDRAC Enterprise license keys from Ebay that work properly and without them being super expensive. It's not something I've personally done, but it might be an option worth exploring if you want all the remote management stuff to work.

That being said, I'm not sure what iDRAC7 is like without an Enterprise license. It might be completely fine with my just imagining it being super limited. :)
 
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justinclift said:
Updating iDRAC isn't something I've personally done before, as the Ebay vendor I got mine from had gone through and done it already.

In my reading of stuff while learning though, it seemed like even finding the .iso with the updates was a bit hit or miss as the Dell website might not even have them any more (?).

What's the process you used?
Click to expand...

This was super annoying, actually: I could barely access iDrac from Safari. I had to use Firefox and get it to talk an older TLS version. Then once I got there it went pretty smooth. What was difficult was that to update iDrac itself I had to unpack the file I got from Dell and upload a payload. If it weren't for a colleague who did this before, I'd be banging my head with this until now :)

justinclift said:

On a different topic, apparently it's possible to get (generated?) iDRAC Enterprise license keys from Ebay that work properly and without them being super expensive. It's not something I've personally done, but it might be an option worth exploring if you want all the remote management stuff to work.

That being said, I'm not sure what iDRAC7 is like without an Enterprise license. It might be completely fine with my just imagining it being super limited. :)
Click to expand...
I miss virtual kvm and virtual media. Some newer Cisco servers I used were a bit easier on that since there were no licenses involved. But other than that, I don't think I really need that functionality (for now). But will check the licenses :) Aren't they yearly based?
 
oculos said:
Aren't they yearly based?
Click to expand...
As far as I know, it's a one-time thing. I've never seen any kind of mention of them having any kind of expiry.

The licenses seem to be tied to the service id tag too, so it's not a case of "get one and apply it to everything". Needs to be individually done (damn). ;)
 
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justinclift said:
As far as I know, it's a one-time thing. I've never seen any kind of mention of them having any kind of expiry.

The licenses seem to be tied to the service id tag too, so it's not a case of "get one and apply it to everything". Needs to be individually (damn). ;)
Click to expand...
One thing that it is weird is that after I flashed the H710 Mini to IT mode, two of the new disks I installed won't show up as available for installation. Only some other disks that were there before. I see the disks if I enter the Avago configurator - so they are there. But the OS doesn't see it.
 
Oh, that's weird. You're able to get to a terminal prompt on the system and run lsblk though yeah?

If so, would you be ok to run lsblk -o tran,name,type,size,vendor,model,label,rota,log-sec,phy-sec and paste the complete result here?

That command should spit out a bunch of useful info about the storage in the system its run on, which will help in trying to figure out what's going on. :)

Thinking about it more, also running lspci -nnk and pasting the output here would be useful too. That one spits out the list of PCIe devices the system can see, and info on which kernel module is loaded for each.

:)
 
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You see, it shows the disks with `lsblk`:

```
root@pm-dell01:~# lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda 8:0 0 745.2G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 1007K 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 1G 0 part
└─sda3 8:3 0 744.2G 0 part
sdb 8:16 0 745.2G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 1007K 0 part
├─sdb2 8:18 0 1G 0 part
└─sdb3 8:19 0 744.2G 0 part
sdc 8:32 0 0B 0 disk
sdd 8:48 0 0B 0 disk
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
```

But somehow it doesn't show them when installing, and no clue why they show with 0B.
 
Heh Heh Heh. Try the whole lsblk -o tran,name,type,size,vendor,model,label,rota,log-sec,phy-sec thing, as that'll include a bunch of extra info (inc specific model info) and will save on back-and-forth questions. :)

Here's an example from one of my R620's:

Bash: 
# lsblk -o tran,name,type,size,vendor,model,label,rota,log-sec,phy-sec
TRAN NAME       TYPE   SIZE VENDOR   MODEL           LABEL     ROTA LOG-SEC PHY-SEC
sas  sda        disk 372.6G HP       MO0400FCTRP                  0     512     512
     ├─sda1     part  1007K                                       0     512     512
     ├─sda2     part     1G                                       0     512     512
     └─sda3     part 371.6G                          rpool        0     512     512
sas  sdb        disk 372.6G HP       MO0400FCTRP                  0     512     512
     ├─sdb1     part  1007K                                       0     512     512
     ├─sdb2     part     1G                                       0     512     512
     └─sdb3     part 371.6G                          rpool        0     512     512
sas  sdc        disk 372.6G HP       MO0400FCTRP                  0     512     512
     ├─sdc1     part  1007K                                       0     512     512
     ├─sdc2     part     1G                                       0     512     512
     └─sdc3     part 371.6G                          rpool        0     512     512
sas  sdd        disk 372.6G HP       MO0400FCTRP                  0     512     512
     ├─sdd1     part  1007K                                       0     512     512
     ├─sdd2     part     1G                                       0     512     512
     └─sdd3     part 371.6G                          rpool        0     512     512
sas  sde        disk 372.6G IBM-D050 HUSMM3240ASS200              0     512    4096
     ├─sde1     part  1007K                                       0     512    4096
     ├─sde2     part     1G                                       0     512    4096
     └─sde3     part 371.6G                          rpool        0     512    4096
sas  sdf        disk 372.6G HP       MO0400FCTRP                  0     512     512
     ├─sdf1     part  1007K                                       0     512     512
     ├─sdf2     part     1G                                       0     512     512
     └─sdf3     part 371.6G                          rpool        0     512     512
sas  sdg        disk 372.6G HP       MO0400FCTRP                  0     512     512
     ├─sdg1     part  1007K                                       0     512     512
     ├─sdg2     part     1G                                       0     512     512
     └─sdg3     part 371.6G                          rpool        0     512     512
sas  sdh        disk 372.6G IBM-D050 ST400FM0233                  0     512    4096
     ├─sdh1     part  1007K                                       0     512    4096
     ├─sdh2     part     1G                                       0     512    4096
     └─sdh3     part 371.6G                          rpool        0     512    4096
usb  sdi        disk  28.9G Verbatim STORE N GO      PVE          1     512     512
     ├─sdi1     part   240K                                       1     512     512
     ├─sdi2     part     8M                                       1     512     512
     ├─sdi3     part   1.3G                          PVE          1     512     512
     └─sdi4     part   300K                                       1     512     512

There's actually a bunch of virtual zvolumes (zd0, zd16, etc) that show up in the output too, but those aren't useful for the purposes of figuring out what your storage setup looks like.

The above output shows it's using 8x 400GB SAS SSDs, with a 32GB Verbatim "Store n Go" usb stick plugged in. That USB stick has a promox installer image on it, so the server can be rebuilt from it fairly easily when needed. :)
 
With those 2x disks showing as 0 bytes, do you know if they're definitely "ok"?

Asking because that 0 byte thing is a known symptom of some SAS SSDs with bad firmware when they've hit the condition which kills them.

The specific model number of those disks (as per lsblk or smartctl output) will give you something to do some online searching about (ie model number + "firmware" in search terms). That'll pretty quickly reveal if the problem is likely one of those fatal firmware things.
 
justinclift said:
With those 2x disks showing as 0 bytes, do you know if they're definitely "ok"?

Asking because that 0 byte thing is a known symptom of some SAS SSDs with bad firmware when they've hit the condition which kills them.
Click to expand...
It could be, but it's a bit strange that it happens with four of them.
justinclift said:
The specific model number of those disks (as per lsblk or smartctl output) will give you something to do some online searching about (ie model number + "firmware" in search terms). That'll pretty quickly reveal if the problem is likely one of those fatal firmware things.
Click to expand...
TRAN NAME TYPE SIZE VENDOR MODEL LABEL ROTA LOG-SEC PHY-SEC
sas sda disk 745.2G ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX800G4R 0 512 4096
├─sda1 part 1007K 0 512 4096
├─sda2 part 1G 0 512 4096
└─sda3 part 744.2G rpool 0 512 4096
sas sdb disk 745.2G ATA INTEL SSDSC2BX800G4R 0 512 4096
├─sdb1 part 1007K 0 512 4096
├─sdb2 part 1G 0 512 4096
└─sdb3 part 744.2G rpool 0 512 4096
sas sdc disk 0B TOSHIBA PX02SMF020 0 512 512
sas sdd disk 0B TOSHIBA PX02SMF020 0 512 512
sata sr0 rom 1024M HL-DT-ST HL-DT-ST DVD+/-RW GU40N 1 512 512


This is what I get So you see it's the Toshiba ones. Weird, huh?
 
If you know someone good with electronics, I kind of wonder if they could get the things working again.

With fatal SAS SSD firmware bugs the common wisdom (also often said in the firmware update info too) is that flashing the firmware afterwards won't recover a dead SSD.

But I have to wonder... once the firmware of a dead SSD has been updated, perhaps there's some other chip on the SSD controller that needs wiping or similar and would fix the problem. I'm not at all sure, I just wonder as it's not like the flash on the things magically all died.
 
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