MD3220i Not Detecting Replacement Controller

Hi Kevin,

Is the replacement controller still showing removed? If you use the CLI does it see the controller? https://dell.to/3zhOQvq

Josh,

SMcli -d -i shows the array and the correct IP addresses, but the address of the controller in question cannot be pinged. 

-Kevin

Hello @kevilution,

Do you have the possibility to connect a serial cable to the new replacement controller to capture the boot via Putty or similar?

Cold you share the boot capture with us?

Thank you in advanced.

Regards.

Hello Diego,

We removed the controller and disconnected the battery for 15 minutes. This was a refurbished controller and I assume it still held it's previous configuration.

After re-inserting the controller, it now displays in MDSM as offline - and reporting the last known state of the old, bad controller.

I'm reading through the recovery guru guide at 3.a regarding DHCP reservations and I have an existing reservation for the old controller, but that IP address (10.129.2.30) isn't the same as what was shown (10.129.2.11) when I ran SMcli -d -i it displayed:

ARRAY_NAME  10.129.2.30   10.129.2.31   10.129.2.10   10.129.2.11

The first two IP addresses are existing reservations, but cannot be pinged. The second two IP addresses are what I believe to be the management interfaces as I can ping 10.129.2.10 (existing, working controller).

If you connect to the serial port what is the output? Does it show a lockdown or anything?

Josh,

I cannot locate the serial cable at this time (installed before I was employed).

I'm curious if the reservations were set during initial configuration of both controllers, then changed to static IPs (10.129.2.10 &.11) when wrapping up the configuration.

Excellent, thank you for the information.

I've seen the settings for IP address, and to connect via serial in Putty, but are there specific settings when connecting directly? Crossover cable, telnet, etc?

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Just set a static ip on the laptop in the same subnet, you may need to try all of the ones that the smcli-d -I gave as an output and see if you can reach it with smcli or install mdsm and see if it will show up. I am hoping we can make sure that the controller is functioning. The other thing to try is just the not working controller by itself and see if it is a communication issue with the other controller and they are not syncing properly.

It is possible. Can you have downtime to separate it from the rest of the network and connect it directly to a laptop to avoid any conflicts?

Good point, so no it wouldn’t need to be.

We can schedule downtime.

Since it's offline in MDSM and the activity LEDs on the management port are, would downtime be required?

Josh,

I'm having a serial cable on overnight delivery. I wasn't able to access the device with a direct network connection.

There are no link lights on the management interface either when connected to our switch, or direct connected to my computer. Is that because it is still marked as "Offline" in MDSM?

It should still have link lights. Once you get the serial cable we should be able to get more information.

Just to rule out other potential causes I swapped patch cables and chose a different interface on my switch for the controller management and there are still no link lights.