Sudden problems with B410i in HBA mode on HP DL380e Gen 8 server

[kingtj]

Hi! I'm hoping I might get lucky and find someone here with a lot of experience with the HP Proliant DL380e G8 and FreeNAS.

I bought one of these recently from a server reseller in the LFF configuration, that has a total of 14 SATA/SAS drive bays. It has 12 in front and an additional 2 in the rear, that seem to occupy a space often used for other HP expansion products. It came with only 2 2TB HP SAS drives installed, but I was able to populate it with 12 more Western Digital Red 6TB drives. I followed the instructions on the YouTube video linked here:

How to turn HP Smart array raid controller to HBA - Mode

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That let me put the B120i controller card in the server into HBA mode successfully.

Then, FreeNAS was able to see and use all of my drives. (I was warned that without using real HP drives, I could run into weird issues like fans ramping up to high speeds and status lights not working on the drive trays. I did have that with a Hitachi drive I tried to use at one point, but the WD Red drives seem to be cooperating better. I don't think the drive seek lights work on the front trays with them but I'm not concerned about that since this server sits in my cellar anyway and is rarely seen.)

FreeNAS 11.2 has been working happily for months now with this setup, until 2 days ago. I did the U7 update from U6 and the system never came back up. Actually, the USB thumb drive I use as the boot device for the system is still working fine. It attempt to boot FreeNAS 11.2U7 but throws some errors about the disk controller not responding to a command during boot and then says it can't locate any of my drive pools.

It appears the B120i controller failed, except the HP diagnostics report that it's "OK" and the "SuperCap" battery pack attached to it reports ok as well.

I went ahead and ordered an HP version of the LSI 9205 controller card, thinking I may need to disable the B120i and try it instead, plugged into a PCIe slot. But it'll be over a week before the card arrives in the mail, and it's still just a mystery to me why this problem only appeared with the U7 update? This server has been rebooted a number of times before and I've done other FreeNAS updates before without problems.

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

Hi @kingtj - I don't have any experience with the DL380e G8 (I have a DL360 G7 that runs ESXi for me; FreeNAS is on a Supermicro box); but here is a couple of thoughts:

1. Have you tired booting into recovery mode and booting back into U6? It could be something "strange" with U7... See https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2-U7/install.html#if-something-goes-wrong
2. Have you tried re-download U7, verifying the checksum, and burning it to a USB drive and re-install that way? (make sure you have a backup of your config if you don't already have one - and not saved on your FreeNAS box :) )
3. Have you tried shutting the server down - power off - for a period of time and then powering on? You could have a heat-related issue (hopefully not a cold solder joint)
4. Can you remove the B410i card? I had a Dell PE2950II that had the "integrated card" but it could still be removed. Maybe reseating it will help.

Good luck!

 

[kingtj]

Hi @kingtj - I don't have any experience with the DL380e G8 (I have a DL360 G7 that runs ESXi for me; FreeNAS is on a Supermicro box); but here is a couple of thoughts:

1. Have you tired booting into recovery mode and booting back into U6? It could be something "strange" with U7... See https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2-U7/install.html#if-something-goes-wrong
2. Have you tried re-download U7, verifying the checksum, and burning it to a USB drive and re-install that way? (make sure you have a backup of your config if you don't already have one - and not saved on your FreeNAS box :) )
3. Have you tried shutting the server down - power off - for a period of time and then powering on? You could have a heat-related issue (hopefully not a cold solder joint)
4. Can you remove the B410i card? I had a Dell PE2950II that had the "integrated card" but it could still be removed. Maybe reseating it will help.

Good luck!

I thought about rolling it back to U6, but I'm noticing the system seems to be taking an abnormally long time to POST too, and is making me press F1 to continue (finally continues booting if you wait long enough after that, but don't recall it stopping like that before). It appears more like it's having an actual hardware problem with the controller (which by the way is actually the B120i, not B410i like I originally posted).

I'm going to try reseating everything and seeing what it does if I boot with the drive cables disconnected from it. But thanks for the suggestions!

 

[kingtj]

Ok! Pulling everything out and reconnecting it got it working again! System is back up and running with U7! I did notice it threw an error message about caching functionality being disabled because the supercap battery needs to be replaced -- but I believe that's typical after you unplug it from the controller card. Has to recharge and realize it's functional again, which may take it a little while.

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

My old Dell with the battery backup on the HBA did the same thing until it full charged. I think that the battery backup is needed for the caching function (which my LSI HBAs don't have). You might think about getting a new battery if you keep the B120i.