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Compatibility with 2950 Gen III & PERC H200 + MD1000?
I'm in the process of finishing-off my home networking lab / data center build-out, and I've got a few pieces of Dell gear that I'm completing the installation of. I have a Gen 3 2950 with an existing Perc 6i RAID card for a full compliment of 8 x 146GB SAS drives, and all is functioning fine.
I also have a MD1000 fittied-out with 13 x 1TB SAS Drives and a H200 that I just purchased. The H200 is installed in the bottom of the two black PCIe slots on the mid-riser card. The card is recognized at boot, and I can access the card at BIOS init. When displaying info that the HBA shows, all that I see is that the HBA itself is disabled, with no apparent way of changing this. I have tried both connectors on the backplate of the HBA to the first SAS connector on the MD1000, with no joy. I have ensured that the SAS connectors on both ends are seated correctly. All drives on the MD1000 spin-up properly.
The Firmware is 07.15.08.00-IT.
I am able to see all of the drives in the MD1000 in Windows Disk Management, and after going in and cleaning things up from previous config data within the MD1000 I was able to create a 10TB Spanned NTFS Volume - of course, it's software RAID, since I'm unable to see any drives or drive volumes when accessing the MD1000 via the H200 HBA's BIOS configs.
At least we know that the devices are talking, but this "Disabled" business on the HBA itself is unnerving.
DELL-Daniel My
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June 19th, 2017 13:00
Hello
The H200 is an internal RAID controller. Connecting it to an MD unit is not supported. Either you are referring to a SAS 6 HBA improperly as an H200 or you have an H200 that someone has force-flashed SAS6 HBA firmware onto. Either way, there are no BIOS settings to configure for an HBA.
Thanks
DELL-Daniel My
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June 19th, 2017 14:00
That is the "6 GBps SAS HBA". There are no BIOS options. It is just an HBA, it is a pass-through controller.
http://www.dell.com/support/home/Products/ser_stor_net/dell_adapters
Thanks
ScottKin
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June 19th, 2017 14:00
Let me clarify - the card in question is a PERC 6Gb/s SAS H200E 12DNW, and *not* a H200.
ScottKin
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June 19th, 2017 15:00
The BIOS info during POST for the card I have added was not imaginary. brings-up the configuration for the said card, as I have previously mentioned, as also shown in the Manual for the said "6 GB/s SAS HBA" in the link you provided - the link is shown below:
http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_dell_adapters/dell-sas-hba-6gbps_User%27s%20Guide_en-us.pdf
Establishing a RAID 0 Array with all but 3 slots in the MD1000 populated using software-based RAID in Windows will take nearly 3 days to create / format a 10TB array at this speed. I'm looking for troubleshooting assistance, not a simple redirect to documentation that I already have access to & have gone through. and doesn't provide *any* kind of real troubleshooting assistance.
ScottKin
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June 21st, 2017 04:00
Still waiting for some kind of help here - setting-up a RAID 0 Array in software via Windows Disk Management is the worst path possible, and I'm still wanting to know why the HBA card shows "Disabled" in the BIOS setup.
ScottKin
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June 21st, 2017 06:00
So, now (Thanks to Reddit), I have discovered that his is a firmware issue.
As noted before, the Firmware is 07.15.08.00-IT.
There are two different firmware sets for this card: The "IT" firmware configures the card as the PERC 6Gb/s SAS HBA, which runs as a pass-through to the external Disk Array and provides *no* configuration capabilities. The "IR" provides for configuration of attached devices. The IT Firmware is for HBAs providing external connectors, where the IR Firmware is for Internal devices.
The question now is: Can I flash the existing card to the IR firmware so it can see the external array and perform RAID Array Management for equipment like the MD1000?
DELL-Daniel My
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June 21st, 2017 10:00
There are not two different firmware for this card, there is one firmware. I've tried to explain multiple times that there are no configuration options for the SAS 6 HBA. It is a pass-through controller, it does not support volume creation. It is not a hardware RAID controller.
That firmware is for the H200. It is a different card. The threads you are referencing are talking about force-flashing firmware from another controller to change the operation/feature set of the card.
Maybe, I will not assist with it.
Thanks
m_w_mol
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November 13th, 2019 08:00
This is an extremely old post ( > 2 years, I know), but since the solution was never given, I would like to comment for people like me who are looking for solutions to their problems.
The fact that during POST the H200e adapter shows it is "disabled by user" (BIOS Option: Boot Support = Disabled) is only relevant for the boot-process; the adapter will pop up in your Device Manager (Windows) or equivalent management tool on other platforms.
In my case, after installing the H200e, I suddenly couldn't boot from my internal SAS 6iR anymore, which worked fine before. After a little fiddling with both BIOS'es (SAS 6iR and H200e) I tried the option to disable boot from the H200e, and voila, everything worked like a charm again. Seems they are competing for priority in boot order, or something ...
I'm now able to hook up my NetApp DS4246 (which is basically the same as the PowerVault MD1000/MD1200, it's "just" a JBOD) and read all S.M.A.R.T. values of the disks in it.