SSA adapter and disk

[brc009]

Yesturday have upgraded from scsi to SSA - have 6 disks but cannot get the loop working correctly - disks two and three continually flash and if you look in the diags you see

disk A B
6 5
5 4
4 3
????????????
3 2
2 1
1 0

There is obviously a broken link but after 32 hrs i cannot sort it - please help me get some sleep.
Thx

 

[brc009]

yes it is, have you got scsi drives aswell or just SSA, i have both. Any ideas

 

[brc009]

if i do Advanced Diagnostics Routines / System verification


A PROBLEM WAS DETECTED

45302
100% SSA-SUBSYSTEM 30-60

Any idea what this code means , loooked through my paper work mbut to no avail

 

[DSMARWAY]

Hi brc009 ,

Just a few basic questions , which i can't see in this thread

1. what type of SSA Sybsystem have you got i.e. d40 / 7133 model 600 i.e. on the backup of the SSA subsystem where the disks are physically connected are they numbered like :-

4 1
5 16
8 13
9 12

j1 j2
j3 j4
j5 j6
j9 j10

Do you have 16 disk slots) 8 at front and 8 at the back?
You have 6 SSA 9.1 GB disks. How are your disks physically connected i.e. in slots 1-6 and the rest blank(dummy) disks or
D B D D D B D D ( D=disk B=blank(dummy)) at the front and the rest blank disks ( dummy)?
You must have dummy disks if not fully populated ?
(Basically what AIX5L has suggessted about )

SO from B1 on SSA card 0 where do you connect this on the SSA CAB ?
and out of SSA CAB ? goes into B2 ( is this right)

so you have 1 loop 2 x SSA Cables ?

A row of ????? shows that Pdisk0 is configured i.e. shows it on the system but the system cannot recognise it for that particular SSA address?
SO are all your SSA disks using the same micro code level
i.e. do lscfg -vl pdisk0-5
look for type of disk (machine type and model e.g. DMVC9B
and Ros level id e.g. 0061 ( look on the net)

 

[brc009]

Have 6 disks in a 6 bay , so they are all populated

yes 1 loop two cables


I do get an error up on screen

ssa1 SRN 45202 IBM SSA 160 Serial Raid Adapter 14109100

any ideas what this could be, not hardware fault cause ive just changed the ssa card itself

 

[Chapter11]

DSMARWAY: He's using the internal bays on an F50, not a 7133. The rules are slightly different because there are 6 slots in such a bay but I don't have a manual in front of me at this particular moment. One of the other vagaries is that depending on the physical size of the drive, it might be impossible to put a dummy in the empty slots.

 

[DSMARWAY]

O.k , have a look in h/w doc page 3-58 onwards

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/library/hardware_docs/7025_f50.html

 

[AIX5L]

Did you have installed all Filesets ?
When you run cfgmgr comes any Messege back ?
Do you have error entries in the Erroreport ? errpt
You have Exganched the pdisk0, with a Dummy ( take a test )

 

[bi]

It looks as if you need to do a microcode upgrade. Your ROS level (from lscfg -vl) has a ROS level of B300. The latest is B800. Go to this site:

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/products/ssa/index.html

and click RS6000 Code and navigate from there to get to the adapter microcode download area. That may solve the errpt output. Check the ROS level of your disks as well.

And here is another question: are you seeing the pdisks in an lscfg but can't see them when you try to create an array? If that is the case, there is something wrong with the cabling.

My previous question was trying to get how you cable from B1 to the drawer (which position are you putting the cable in from B1?) and how you cable from B2 to the drawer.

 

[Chapter11]

Look where the loop is broken. Replace the disks on either side of the break. It's possible that the loop is being broken by a defective disk.

 

[brc009]

bi - youve hit the nail on the head there. if i look in lscfg I can see all six disks but when i go to smit - devices - ssa raid arrays - and try to create or view i can never see any disks, what cabling could be wrong , ive checked it a few times.

 

[brc009]

or if anyone knows where there is a diagrams on the net please let me know. its a 6 port backplane internally on a F50 .

Thanks
for all your help so far, your time has been appricated

 

[brc009]

at present all all six disks are identified as AIX system disks, is this a problem????

 

[bi]

It could be, but I don't think so. I had a very similar problem a couple of months ago: I could see the disks as pdisks (and hdisks at the system level) but couldn't use any of the disks to create an array. That was because of a cabling error.

Go to

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/

and search for Understanding SSA Subsystems in Your Environment. That will give you some examples of how to cable an SSA drawer to a system.

Alternatively, if you would please post how exactly you have your disk subsystem cabled to the SSA card, there will probably be many people out there who will see what the problem is right away. Several have asked you how you have the disks cabled, what kind of SSA subsystem you have (the model number, please) but I don't see your answer anywhere in this thread.

Have you applied the microcode upgrade? You are two versions behind if you haven't. But that isn't causing your not being able to create arrays.

 

[Chapter11]

In order for him to see the disks as available to create an array, he'll have to change them from "AIX System Disk" to "Array Candidate"

 

[bi]

but if his cabling is incorrect, which appears may be the case from his diag output, it won't matter that the disks are tagged as array candidates. He still won't be able to make an array. This happened to me when my cabling was incorrect. It didn't matter that I changed all the disks to array candidates -- I still couldn't create an array.

And, in fact, if I recall correctly, if the cabling is correct, by default you can create an array immediately. You don't have to go in and change the status of the disks to array candidate.

We still don't know how he has this disk subsystem cabled. I am not familiar with an SSA disk subsystem that only has 6 disks.

 

[Chapter11]

bi: F40/F50 internal bays are 6 disks wide.

 

[bi]

Yes. I've had a couple of systems with those six packs. And you can connect those disks to an SSA card? I never tried that.

 

[Chapter11]

The bays can be either SCSI or SSA. You naturally require the correct backplanes and host adapter. Off the top of my head, H50s and H70s can also be similarly configured, so presumably any type with the same case can do it too.