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122666
6Gbps SAS HBA not posting on an R720
Hey guys, so here's an interesting one which I'm wondering if someone has seen. So we have a series of R720 servers with the 6Gbps SAS HBA cards in them (2 per server). On all but 1 of these servers we do not see the card in the intial POST that let's us get in and see what the SAS Addresses are. Now the odd thing is, once we have loaded up the OS (tried both ESX 4.1i and Windows 2008 R2), you can see the HBA with no problem, but this doesn't help when you're trying to assign SAS ID's to the MD3220. So it's not like these are bad cards (possibly, but that may mean we got a few of them). It really seems to be something with how the R720 is (UEFI maybe?) or is not enumerating these cards because I can't even see it in the Lifecycle Management Controller or the iDRAC7 Enterprise console.
Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
Jeffe
Jeffe210
8 Posts
3
August 31st, 2015 09:00
3 years later, running into the same problem again and I manage to solve it.
In the BIOS, go to Integrated Devices -> Slot Disablement. The SAS cards had their slots set to "Boot Driver Disabled". I changed them to "Enabled" and sure enough they show up in the BIOS now.
Funny how things are when you revisit them later.
Jeffe
DELL-Chris H
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November 5th, 2012 12:00
Sorry you are having issues with the HBA's, do you have the part number for the 6gb SAS cards you are using? Did you order them installed in the server, or did you add them?
Also, is the server up to date on drivers and firmware?
Jeffe210
8 Posts
0
November 5th, 2012 13:00
Updated BIOS to 1.3.6 with no luck. I also found a copy of the SAS FW Updater (v07.01.33.00) however when I run the sas2flsh utility the versions I have are far higher than that:
FW ver: 07.15.08.00
NVDATA: 07.00.00.19
x86-BIOS: 07.11.10
I'm going to run the sas2flsh utility on the one R720 that actually shows the prompt to see if there may be a version difference on the SAS card. Do you know where I can find more recent versions, I hit the link for the SAS card in support.dell.com but I can't seem to find a combination that shows me any results (any OS I choose says no drivers available).
Thanks!
Jeffe
Jeffe210
8 Posts
0
November 5th, 2012 14:00
So I have a temporary work around, but not an answer: Using the sas2flsh utility downloaded from the old firmware version: www.dell.com/.../poweredge-2970 I can run "sas2flsh -list" to get the SAS Address from controller 0 and then "sas2flsh -list -c 1" to get the SAS Address from the other card. This has enabled me to continue set up of the DAS and finish what I need to, but it still does not answer why it doesn't show up in post. Hopefully someone can help out there.
Jeffe210
8 Posts
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November 5th, 2012 14:00
Just a follow up, checked the server where the SAS HBA shows up in post and it is running the same versions listed above. The BIOS is at 1.2.6 (which the other one was at which still showing problems). We have uncabled and power-cycled the DAS's, even swapped out the HBA cards all with no luck. So this is 3 of the 4 R720's with the SAS HBAs not showing up in post. Still gonna keep digging around.
Eds209
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January 10th, 2013 09:00
I have had the same issue witn an H200 SAS HBA
controller / Quantum LTO5 and found that this worked for me.
The solution to the problem is to re audit the HW config held in the Life Cycle controller, for some reason it didnt detect the new HW.
Reboot to BIOS
Press F10 to enter the Lifecycle Controller setup.
This will invoke a hardware audit the card will then be
found and added to the HW inventory.
Exit the Lifecycle Controller setup and reboot .
Controller firmware will initialise and device will be
visible in the BIOS startup
NOTE: no devices are detected at this point as BIOS is
looking for boot disks.
Allow windows to start wait a few minutes for new devices to
be installed.
Open Device manager and check that the H200 SAS HBA
controller and the Quantum LTO5 devices are installed
Problem resolved.
tpedwards
1 Message
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September 16th, 2021 10:00
Five years later and still helpful. Enabled BIOS for all slots and now BIOS now shows up at POST time!