PERC 6/i - Persistent Array Consistency Issue

Question

I have a PE T410 with 6x 1TB 3.5' SATA hard drives. The issue started last week after a power failure that lasted over an hour. The server is on a battery backup and it is connected to the battery backup via USB, and the server was SUPPOSED to shut down safely at the end of the battery run time. I believe it did but have not confirmed. As a result, also last week, we had an issue with our Domain Controller Windows VM that needed a chkdsk to be ran. I knew that was not good being a VM. So I ran a consistency check on the RAID array and it found inconsistencies. Those were corrected and all appeared well with host server and VMs. Host server and VMs are all Windows Server 2012 R2.  Today, the server had nothing but a black screen on it and just a mouse pointer. Couldn't safely power it off so we had to manually power off the server.  Powering it up, it came back up OK, but there are more inconsistencies on the drives. This affected another VM which contains dental patient data. Luckily we were able to correct those.  We do have backups of critical data.  I'm suspecting one of the drives is failing, but cannot tell which because SMART has not been tripped and there are no other alerts that I can see. There are obviously inconsistencies on the array, but I cannot tell which drive is causing the issue. It is also complaining about the RAID battery, which goes between bad and good. So I'll be ordering a replacement RAID battery as well.  This is only (so far) happening on our DATA VD, not the OS VD.  Any way I can find the culprit hard drive, since it hasn't tripped SMART?

DELL-Charles R · Answer

Hello TNC10284,

I'm sorry to see you have persistent Consistency check issues. It could be that updating the firmware will resolve any communication issues that could be causing the array to have consistency problems or it could be a puncture affecting the array. It's good you have and maintain a good backup.

I'll recommend some troubleshooting steps:

Do any of your hard drives indicate Predictive Fail Yes?
Export controller log, review for array issues
Run diagnostics in USC to test the hard drives
Update PERC firmware and hard drive firmware. Dell hard drive firmware can be found on the support site. For third party hard drives, you will need to check with manufacturer.
Run consistency checks consecutively a few times until no error are reported

To get controller log: in Open Manage, expand Storage>select the controller.

Click Information/Configuration hyper link at top.

Use the ‘Controller Task’ drop down>

select Export Log, click Execute and Export on next page.

Log will be in Windows folder with file name LSI_####.log

Let me know if you would like me to review the log.

Some terms you can search:

Double media errors

Punctur

uncorrectable

unrecoverable

Run diags

Reboot Press F10 in top right corner. Once the USC loads, select ‘Hardware Diagnostics’ in the left side and click ‘Run Diags’ in the body.
1. When the next page loads there will be 2 test available to run:
2. 'Run Diags' select 'Express Test'. Report any errors. Note any messages and continue testing.

Please let me know how things go.

TNC10284 · Answer

Firmware updated. Rescanned both VDs. Both look OK so far.

TNC10284 · Answer

DELL-Young E · Answer

Hello, you seem to be using a non Dell HDD, hence the issue. Hope it helps.

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

PERC 6/i - Persistent Array Consistency Issue

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