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Dell H700 in a 2900
I'm trying to replace the perc 6/i card in my Dell 2900 with a H700. All firmware have been upgraded to the latest levels on the server and the H700. Because the H700 has different connections, I had to buy two http://www.tripplite.com/sku/S510-003 cables to connect the H700 to the backplane. Everything connects correctly and I can see the two virtual drives that originally existed on the perc6/i , but when I boot, I get a "SAS cable is missing or misconfigured" message during the post. I have ESX 5.5.x installed and it boots to the point of loading the kernel and then just hangs completely which I believe is due to the SAS cable error. I'm just not sure where to go from here. Everything works great when the perc 6/i is installed but I am looking at using 4tb drives which the perc 6/i card does not support. I even looked at cross flashing the perc 6/i card to a SAS 1078 card which flashes but the ctrl-R won't work afterwards persumably because the SBR on the perc 6/i is still from the perc card and not from the SAS 1078 card which I couldn't find (SBR for SAS 1078 that is). I know that is a lot of information but I've been at this for weeks now and I haven't made any progress. The reason I am keeping the 2900 is because it is one of the few Dell servers that has 8 3.5" drive slots. The same server also has a Dell H800 which is cabled to a MD1000 with 4tb drives in it and it is working fine.
theflash1932
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June 11th, 2014 15:00
Maybe someone will chime in with a more solid answer, but I seem to remember a thread where one SAS cable didn't work properly, and simply getting another cable eliminated the error ... not sure if it was because it was a cheap Chinese-made cable or if there was something else about the cable that made a difference. I couldn't find it with a quick search.
Another thought ... I'm not sure if the SAS cable message would be a showstopper for this either. Is your system firmware up to date? The H700 is not supported on the 2900 and anything but the latest version of BIOS, ESM, backplane, etc. may not work, so I would make sure everything is updated. For example, a PERC 6 will not work in a system with BIOS and ESM firmware too old to support it (originally, the 29x0 took the PERC 5).
swspjcd
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June 11th, 2014 20:00
The first thing I did was create a bootable ISO specifically for the 2900 with the latest firmwares from the most recent dell repository and upgraded the whole box. I had to do the H700 separately because it wasn't included in the ISO. If it is a bad cable, how can I test that? I'm sure I can return the cable(s) for a refund or exchange but I want to make sure it really is a bad cable first. I found several other threads in other forums with people saying they successfully used a H700 in a 2900 and no mention of the same error.
swspjcd
51 Posts
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June 19th, 2014 12:00
I've tried cables from both monoprice and newegg which in the user reviews say will work on a H700 and a Dell 2900 but no matter what, I get the "SAS cable is missing or misconfigured" error during POST. Is it possible the problem is because the H700 has a bad port on it? I bought it off of EBAY.
theflash1932
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June 19th, 2014 13:00
Assuming the cable "should" work for this application, if either the controller port or the backplane port weren't working correctly, I suppose you could get the same type of error message. Do both cables work if installed individually on one backplane port or the other? Controller ports?
swspjcd
51 Posts
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June 20th, 2014 05:00
The backplane definitely works as when the perc 6/i card is installed, everything works fine with no errors. I haven't tried using only one cable at a time because I thought that even though there are two backplane ports, if you create two virtual drives, one is assigned to one port and the second virtual drive is assigned to the other port. In other words, no dual pathing. I guess I can try just one cable and boot and see if I get one or possibly two errors about "missing or misconfigured". Are you saying that is I have one cable and it happen to be in the bad port of the H700, if there is one, that I should get two errors about both A and B side?
theflash1932
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June 20th, 2014 08:00
No, I'm not saying anything specific ... just troubleshooting, trying to understand the scope of the issue.
PWR-IT
3 Posts
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April 28th, 2015 00:00
Hi swspjcd,
Where you able to figure this out and successfully use the H700 on the PE2900?
Thanks,
G
swspjcd
51 Posts
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April 28th, 2015 05:00
No. I never got it to work despite a lot of effort and at least one completely trashed card.
donjohn12
1 Message
1
June 15th, 2015 12:00
I read somewhere that someone else had this same problem, and found that by moving the perc card to another slot, I think it was the 8x slot the problem was solved. I'm about to get the h700 card and do this with my 2900.
brady1408
3 Posts
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August 16th, 2015 13:00
I would like to do this same thing if I can to upgrade my 8 1TB drives to something bigger, not worth getting a new server for me as I use this as a home file server.
Did you order the H700 and if so did you have success getting it to work with the powerEdge 2900?
zampaz
5 Posts
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September 5th, 2015 14:00
Hi Donjohn12;
Assuming you got the h700/cables, did moving the h700 to a different slot resolve the cable issue?
bmasuda
38 Posts
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November 17th, 2015 17:00
just wanted to post here to say that I was able to get H700 to work with my PE2900-III in the integrated slot. The key is having the correct cable, and not all cables are the same; it's not a matter of quality, it's a matter of how the wires are setup as there are at least 4 different permutations of pin assignments depending on the application. more info posted in this other thread here:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/906/p/19443758/20845638
ARCRVA
1 Message
1
April 10th, 2017 20:00
i can confirm this as after reading this i just tried it and bam it works perfectly.
mccoyitau
1 Message
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April 9th, 2018 02:00
Hi, that link is Dead can you describe your fix or what was needed? i am in same pickle.
Cheers
Wolf480pl
3 Posts
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May 8th, 2018 08:00
I tried yesterday and, aside from my cables being a few centimeters too short, it looked like even if they were long enough, the (straight) SFF-8087 plugs would be too tall and I wouldn't be able to close the cover.
Did you manage to close the cover with the cables connected to the H700 in dedicated slot?
Do your cables have straight or angled plugs?