I'm messing around with server and RAID hardware for the first time, so correct me at any point if my understanding is wrong.
I'm wondering why the WD (and not the Seagate or Toshiba; see image below) seems to be hot-pluggable in my (cheaply-bought-off-of-Ebay-2010-server) SR2625UR server? I've been troubleshooting this for days and I don't have a clue what I'm doing. (First time dealing with server hardware or hardware RAID).
The setup: SR2625URBRPR server components with a S5520UR main motherboard. The eight midplane SATA/SAS connectors are connected to a LSI 9211-8i RAID/SAS card. A SAS configuration utility firmware is installed.
I think I've narrowed it down to the hard drives being the problem. Here's a description of the problem from my troubleshooting:
- The hotplugging backplane works fine (except for the hotplugging part). If I connect one of the exposed SATA ports on the midplane (passively extended from the backplane) to the main system motherboard, any of the drives work fine as a regular SATA drive (i.e., not using the RAID card). However, trying to unplug one of the two non-hotplug drive doesn't fare so well (system freezes), but unplugging the hotplug drive works fine.
- When plugging in a drive caddy when the computer is on, only the caddy with the WD shows a green light briefly. The system gives no indication of the other two being plugged in.
- Only the WD shows up in the SAS configuration utility (for the hardware card). It is also the only one to show up in the BIOS with this setup. (By connecting the midplane connectors to the system connectors, it does show up in BIOS, but again are not hotpluggable.)
- I tried switching the caddies around with the different hard drives, and tried testing many combinations of the hard drives in each of the eight hotplug slots in the SR2625. The same results happen for all of them.
The BIOS and SAS firmware should be up to date -- I recently flashed the latest versions. I also flashed the latest backplane firmware from Intel.
Image of the hard drives:
From a quick search online (e.g., this post), any hard drive should be hot-swappable, so I'm confused why these aren't all working.
A difference between these hard drives is what's stored in them: they do each have different partitioning schemes (and one is GPT, while the other two are MBR), different data, and slightly different operating characteristics (e.g., different current draw, see image); but since they all work when using a SATA cable directly, it shows that all are operational and are correctly powered by the backplane.
Any ideas on why two of these hard drives aren't working with hot-swapping and the RAID card? It seems that the hotplugging ability, recognization by the machine (the green light), and recognization by the RAID card come hand-in-hand, even though all work with just a regular SATA connection to the main system board SATA controller.
Update from 7/31
The Segate, WD, and Toshiba are SATA III, II, and III, respectively. Found and tested another three hard drives today: an Adata SP600 SATA III SSD, a Hitachi 5K320-160 SATA II HDD, and a Seagate W381CVX9 SATA III SSHD. Only the Hitachi works. The main motherboard backplane comes with support with SATA II. Even though SATA versions are supposed to be compatible with each other I'm thinking this is the most likely reason the backplane only seems to be recognizing the drives -- I'm assuming it's something to do with the physical layer difference between SATA II and III?
Whatever it is, the backplane (i.e., the light doesn't turn on) and RAID card don't seem to recognize SATA III, but the BIOS setup recognizes it fine and can boot from it if the midplane is connected to the main system board SATA controller. I don't know much about this and can't seem to find much online, so if someone can find a good reference to this, I'd gladly accept your answer.
Update from 8/2
With the setup below, I connected some hard drives (SATA III) to the RAID controller directly and powered them from an external power supply (from the computer with the black case in the back). In addition to those, there are three hard drives connected to the backplane: the SATA II WD and the SATA III Adata connected to the RAID card through the midplane, nd the SATA III Toshiba connected to the main SATA controller via a SATA cable (the blue cable -- ignore the red one, which is disconnected).
As you can tell, three devices are showing in the SAS controller configuration tool: the two connected directly and the WD. The Adata is not showing up, and will not show up in the BIOS/OS. The Toshiba, which is connected to the main SATA controller, does show up in the BIOS and works perfectly fine, but (as mentioned earlier in this post) is not hot-pluggable.
These results confuse me. The fact that connecting any SATA II or SATA III hard drives to the RAID card directly means that there is nothing wrong with the RAID card. The fact that any SATA II or SATA III drives to the main SATA controller via a SATA cable means that the backplane/midplane works.
But for some reason, the backplane doesn't recognize SATA III devices with the light indicator, and those SATA III devices connected to the RAID card via the midplane aren't recognized either. Other combinations (e.g., using SATA II, bypassing the RAID card, and bypassing the backplane/midplane) all work. Can someone explain why this is the case?
Another update from 8/2
Two new SATA II HDDs I ordered today arrived (Seagate Momentus Thin, 320GB, 7200RPM). They work with the RAID card (appear in BIOS and the SAS configuration utility) but the LEDs don't light. This makes me more confused.
Some firmware versions, if it helps:
- BIOS/BMC/FRUSDR/ME: 69/64/26/1.12
- Hotplugging HSC: 2.17
- SAS (for 9211-8i): P20 (using sas2flash)
FWIW I'm currently running Arch, but I think this is a firmware/hardware problem.
