Intel Communities: Message List - Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:00:45 GMT

I too have seen these issues, using all intel parts (SC5400 Chassis, S5000PSL MB, 6 Bay Expander, Intel RAID card) and for 2 years random crashes and then disks being marked as bad on reboot. Making the the minimum number of disks required to boot online again and rebuilding any offline disks which remain solves the issue but this just isnt suitable for critical business operations and our trust in these servers has gone down considerably. So just looking at intels site for the backplane (http://ark.intel.com/products/51196/6-Drive-Hot-Swap-Expander-Kit-AXX6DRV3GEXP) they look like they are upto version 2.18 however the last time the S5000PSL board was mentioned was in firmware 2.14. So my question is this, can the backplane be upgraded to 2.18 via DOS on the S5000PSL boards? Im assuming that the firware should only be effecting the backplane and so shouldnt make a difference which board you are running as long as you get the upgrade procedure correct i.e. DOS or EFI.

Any info would be great :-) We did talk to a member of Intel staff who contradicted himself alot one moment saying you could upgrade on a S5000PSL then saying you couldnt and in the end we just established he didnt really know.

Thanks

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:37:34 GMT

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18308&lang=eng

I don't know if you are experiencing the same problem: on our system there where never any crash-dumps, or other log errors.

The system did just froze and was unable to restart (see original post).

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:47:05 GMT

Hmmm

Even after applying all driver and firmware updates, I am still getting errors:

Feb 26 17:19:17 storage-test-test MR_MONITOR[7588]: <MRMON181> Controller ID: 0 Enclosure shutdown: Ports 4-7:1

Feb 26 17:22:22 storage-test-test MR_MONITOR[8213]: <MRMON113> Controller ID: 0 Unexpected sense: PD = :16 - Enclosure services unavailable, CDB = 0x1c 0x
01 0x0e 0x14 0x00 0x00 , Sense = 0x70 0x00 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x0a 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x35 0x02 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00

Does anyone have any insight into this?

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:50:46 GMT

I Notice you mention firmware 2.12 and 2.14.

I see no mention of these version numbers at http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Server+Products&ProductLine=Intel%C2%AE+Storage+Systems&ProductProduct=Intel%C2%AE+Storage+Server+SSR212MC2

Can you provide a link?

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:42:40 GMT

Since Intel published firmware version 2.12, there haven’t been any crashes!

Only in version 2.12, SATA drives are seen as 1.5 Gb/s (not 3.0 Gb/s) drives.

Version 2.14 fixed this.

Fulco

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:26:30 GMT

Me too

I have two of these servers, both running Linux and both giving same errors - crashing, drives missing after restart, rmm failing.

I have left one turned off!! for the last few months. I will power it up again and try to get all updates done (Including TA-933-1) to see if I get any further with it.

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:26:33 GMT

That is nuts. Thanks for the info. If I wouldn't have found this post I'd think I was losing my mind.

About 5 months ago I built 3 servers with Identical parts. One server was a mess with these issues and the other two were fine. After replacing all of the parts and spending hours on the phone with Intel (they kept telling me they had never seen this before) I finally gave up on the one and just installed the two good ones. I installed both and one has never had any issues but the other one just started to fail a week ago after working fine for 4+ months. When calling Intel last week they never mentioned TA-933-1. I just updated it on Friday but I guess I'll have to baby this server because I won't ever be sure it is right.

Thanks again. I really hope you solve your issues. I seem to have more luck finding answers on sites like this then from actual tech support now.

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:56:33 GMT

I replaced the Intel RAID Controller (see original post), because I thought the Controller was causing the crashes. So no MR_Monitor events.

However the Adaptec RAID Controller suffered from the same problem.

Now we know this was due to the Firmware issues: Intel TA: TA-933-1
“The frequency of the failure under normal operating conditions is once in 1 to 12 months depending on the system configuration. The failure may occur with high probability during system FRUSDR update.”
A ‘little’ lie: our system 1-14 days between crash!!!!!!! So more than 75 in a year!

Sorry, but I am really annoyed how about this.(I reported ‘disk’ problems at the beginning of 2008).

I can't rule out that all issue are solved.

The missing drive cage seems to be solved.

However the system has still serious problems:

Enabling the Adaptec Agent (comparable with MR_Monitor), crashes the system.

Adaptec said, this could be related to a firmware issue.

I am in contact with an Adaptec engineer trying to solve this issue.

The last crash led to the un-ability to Back.

Trying another Backup software (Acronis), led to even more problem, now the NICs have disappeared (and Adpatec can’t use VPN to access the system)

Fulco

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:47:14 GMT

Did the HBA issues (missing drives) come back or does that seem to be fixed? I've been fighting the same problem (I think) for a while now and sometimes it would appear to be fixed for a few weeks and then come back.

When you were having issues with the "missing drives" were you getting MR_MONITOR warnings (a lot of them) in the Event logs?

I seem to be having the same issue with the drives missing and I was getting a lot of MR_MONITOR errors in the Event logs? I just tried the HBA firmware update but It has only been a few days without errors so I'm not sure if it has fixed my problem or not.

Re: Two years of trouble with S5000PSL

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:21:24 GMT

The update of the HBA firmware to version 2.12 seems to solve” the missing drives after restart” (genuine Restarts and Crashes) issue.

However the BSOD are still there:

STOP 0x...D1, 0x,...34C

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

tscpip.sys

This happens if Adaptec Agent (Service) is enabled.

On our system this error is reproducible.

I did at least 3 installations!

Adaptec, is using the S500PSL board, unable to reproduce this error.

This time the crash damaged the boot sector (?): chckdsk C: "second NTFS boot sector unwritable" and Windows Backup fails every time.

Fulco