HP P410i - P420i Self-test failure lockup

Recently I was messing around with a DL360G8 from HP. It all looked well until my raid controller, a p420i, quit while I was installing a virtual machine in ESX6.0. When I reboot, I got this nice message; 1783-slot 0 Drive Array Controller Failure. [Self-test failure (cmd=0h, err=00h, lockup=013:0h)]

At first I was kind of clueless, what to do? Was it a failure in my raid controller, or maybe in the cache module? After some Google work I found most people who had a similar problem had it because they did not have OEM disks (neither did I, I just replaced them with some aftermarket Intel SSD DC S3500 ssd's). But after removing them and trying to boot without disks, the error persisted, so it must me something else. I tried booting without the cache module, since many people had issues with this as-well. Unfortunately, this didn't help either. Then I figured I would let the server sit without power for a while to drain any leftover power from batteries or other kind of capacitators, when this didn't work I disabled the p420i in the BIOS/UEFI, I figured maybe if I reinitialise the card in this way, it might work... Wishful thinking, it didn't.

Then, I got the idea to disconnect the cache module, and more importantly, the SAS cables on the motherboard, so there wouldn't be any signal to the raid controller at all. Hallelujah and praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster! It works! In all my enthusiasm I powered down the server to re-attach the cache module and the SAS cables. But hey, when I rebooted the server, the error message was back... Bummer! I figured it must of been the SAS cables, because the cache module alone didn't fix it. So I powered the machine down again and disconnected the SAS cables. I rebooted the machine and held my fingers crossed (with a G8, it takes a while to boot..). Yes! Again no error message. So I hit F8 to enter the adapters setup. Whilst in setup I reconnected the SAS cables to the motherboard and one by one my ssd's reinitialised. When I clicked on the create a raid array, there where my disks, and I could successfully create a new array! After rebooting there was no error message anymore and I was able to boot safely into ESX and continue with my work!

I hope you guys find this useful, and as always... If you find a controller that is helped with the same fix, leave a comment, and you might help someone else with it to!

Upgrading the firmware on a 3ware 6950SE

When I was working on a file-server which had a 3ware 6950SE raid-controller I was struggling to find some decent information about how to flash this card to a newer (4Tb supporting hard-drive) firmware from within windows. So why not bundle all the stuff together for everyone who has the same issue!

First we have the tool 3DM2 Management Utility with this tool you can easily login to your 3ware controller and set up loads of stuff. One of those things is upgrading the firmware. If you know how to use a browser, you can do this!

The mirror is my own FTP, so no weird repackages or other crap, just the original files!

Download the new firmware LSI/3ware | Mirror
Download and install the tool. (needs Java!) LSI/3ware | Mirror
Download Driver for Windows 7/server 2008r2 x64  LSI/3ware | Mirror

Run the Tool from this short-cut.
It will open (a new tab) in your browser.
https://localhost:888/




Login with the administrator account. the standard password is 3ware

Now you hover over the tab Management and click on Maintenance

At the bottom you see a box where you can upload the firmware.

Browse and select the firmware called prom0006.img and click open. After that, click "Begin Update"

You will be prompted with a warning screen, read it and take actions if needed. The next screen showing you your current firmware and the new firmware.
Read the last row, it will tell you weather you can continue or not. (you might need to install an older firmware version first before you can upgrade to the latest version).

Unfortunately I did not make a screen-shot of this point, so please if you did send it to me so I can add it!

Upgrading takes 1 or 2 minutes and might freeze your screen. Don't start clicking everywhere, just wait.



now we repeat this step and upload the file prom0008.img

This time you will not be prompted with anything. after a minute you can reboot, use alt+3 to enter your raid-controller config and create your new raid array!

Congrats, you can now use 4Tb disks on your 6950SE!

Modding a Dell Perc 6 / Dell H310 / Dell H710 (other LSI 1078 or 9223-8i based) SAS Raidcontroller

Last week I was working on my new fileserver. To ensure my data will be a bit safer I will use a RAID solution. In my storage I had a Dell Perc6 controller, perfect for my needs. There was just one problem, when installed my server didn't boot.

I heard about it before, use tape to mask 2 pins in the PCI-E bus. After searching a bit more I found exactly what these 2 pins do, and I took the step and it works like a charm.

The pins you need to mask are:

B5 (SMCLK, SMBus clock) an B6 (SMDAT, SMBus data)

When these two are masked you are blocking the SMBus signals, now they cannot interrupt the boot process anymore. In the past there where only some vague guidelines for this, not real standard, which lead to a variety of different implementations, which in the current time lead to issues with new motherboards who do follow the now current standards.

If you want to apply this mod as well, you may do so with some insulation (electrical) tape or paint you use on nails. I do recommend the first one.

As you can see on the picture on the right I used the tape. You must only cover these 2 pins on THIS side of the controller, you mustn't tape the other side!

I hope this will help some other people in the future.

This has been tested and found working on Perc5 controllers as well!


p.s. this was tested with this hardware
SuperMicro H8SGL-F
AMD Opteron 6166HE
4x4GB ddr3 ecc reg
ESXi 5 (boot from usb)
2x2TB Seagate (attached to the perc6)

Later on I successfully added the 2x2TB as a mirrored RAID setup to my ESX as a datahost.
This Perc6 can only see harddisks up to 2TB, if I ad 3 TB harddisks it only sees 2.1TB

Update:
This raidcontroller has been moved to another system with the same mod, and it works perfectly.
ASRock P67 Extreme 4
Intel I3 3220T
2x2GB DDR3
8x2TB attached to the perc 6



Also confirmed working on the folowing cards:
IBM SR M1115
Dell Perc5
Dell H310

And probably all other LSI 1078 and LSI 9223-8i bases controllers.

Cheers,

Yannick