Start a Conversation

Unsolved

T

1 Rookie

 • 

6 Posts

1369

October 25th, 2023 12:49

Unmanaged drives -> how to handle?

Good morning everyone,

I've been pulling my hair trying to figure this out. Been reading the documentations but i can't find anything related to "unmanaged drives".

We got a Dell Storage SC5020, originally came with 15 SSD drives. Then we bought 15 more of the same HD model to fill the SC5020.

All good there, but for some reason:

5 drives joined the "Assigned folder" of disks and populated the RAID.

while 2 are "managed" and doing nothing

and 2 ended up "unmanaged" doing i guess even less.

And lastly, got 6 drives that ended up in the "Unassigned folder" and are just sleeping there with 1 being "denied with a red X". Also all these 6 drives are "unmanaged".

I'm trying to figure out how to put those drives as "managed" and add them to my RAID".

Hoping all this makes some sense.

Here's a picture of the situation :

I tried to "Manage unassigned Disks" but i get an error : Requested disk(s) must be unassigned for this operation, found assigned disk even though i only select disks 25 to 29.

and Rebalance the raid shows no disks to select

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance

Eric

Moderator

 • 

9.5K Posts

October 25th, 2023 19:04

Thanafos,

 

My first thought is that the drives have Equallogic firmware instead of Compellant, which wouldn't allow their use. Would you do me a favor and let me know the part numbers for the drives or a picture of the drives, as well as when /where you got the drives?

 

Let me know what you see.

 

 

 

 

1 Rookie

 • 

6 Posts

October 27th, 2023 12:26

Good morning Chris,

thanks for the quick reply. I pulled out the last 6 drives in the SAN and they all have this same sticker :

We bought like 15, all the same product from the same place, ServerSupply.com , only place we could find any/many drives. We are in Canada and got them from that company in the US.
We are in the process of upgrading the company infrastructure and decided to buy the drives to give us more time to decide on our next SAN. But we had a space issue, so the quick fix was to find some SSDs quickly.
Unfortunately ran into this issue.
I found out after lot of research that drives are locked by a special firmware. But i can't find any firmwares to update my drives.
Are you able to help me? Anything i can do?
thanks in advance
Eric

(edited)

Moderator

 • 

9.5K Posts

27-10-2023 12:34 PM

Unfortunately I don't know of any supported way to change the firmware of the drive to where it will work, as the firmware "source" is locked to the drive.  So a Compellent drive won't work in an Equallogic drive, and vice versa, nor will it allow the other firmware to be used. There may be 3rd party options, but I am not aware of them.

 

 

DELL-Chris H

Social Media and Communities Professional

Dell Technologies | Enterprise Support Services

#IWork4Dell

Did I answer your query? Please click on ‘Mark as Accepted Answer’. ‘Thumbs up’ the posts you like!

1 Rookie

 • 

6 Posts

October 27th, 2023 14:43

Is there a way for Dell Support to assist me with this you think?

I can't be the only one who's ever had this issue.

Moderator

 • 

9.5K Posts

27-10-2023 14:53 PM

You can try calling in to support, but they will say the same thing, we are not able to change the firmware from one to the other. 
  

 

DELL-Chris H

Social Media and Communities Professional

Dell Technologies | Enterprise Support Services

#IWork4Dell

Did I answer your query? Please click on ‘Mark as Accepted Answer’. ‘Thumbs up’ the posts you like!

1 Rookie

 • 

38 Posts

October 27th, 2023 17:44

you may be locked on your drive count / license count.

Compellent drives also need to be released from their previous system in order to be used in another system. The fact though that you have 5 drives in the up state in an unassigned folder makes think these were released correctly but the 6th drive 1-24 shows a status of down. i am guessing this drive wasent released correctly or may have EQL Firmware on it. Could you try removing drive 1-24 and see if you can then manage any of the disks 1-25 through 1-29. 

No Events found!

Top