I am looking for assistance in troubleshooting some issues I'm having with a six year old Dell T430 that's begun having issues with "losing" disks over the past month.

There is a Dell 800GB SSD RAID-1 pair in the drive enclosure and a 300GB SAS RAID-6 array. Both are being driven by a Perc H730. All is new equipment purchased from Dell and not used/refurb gear.

A month ago the iDRAC on the box reported that Disk 0, the first SSD was removed. I investigated and didn't see any errors on the disk, so I removed it and reinstalled it, and the array rebuilt successfully. Maybe a fluke, maybe not.

Fast forward to this week and now Disk 1 shows the exact same error messages, "Event Message: Disk 1 in Backplane 1 of RAID Controller in Slot 3 is not functioning correctly." followed by the virtual disk degrading and then "Disk 1 in Backplane 1 of RAID Controller in Slot 3 is removed."

This time I shut the server down and inspected the backplane and cables and re-seated the H730 card.

I rebooted and the RAID card immediately started to rebuild the array.

In the event the problem continues occurring what can I do to further narrow it down so I don't look towards replacement of the backplane, all associated cables and the H730 as well?

Thanks. 

Hello,

I've combined the 2 post into a single one. 

The error seem to be similar to the known issue here in the article: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000226989/intel-ssd-drive-missing-issue-with-multiple-dpns but I'm can't be sure if the drive that you are using are listed. But the resolution to the issue is to check for drive firmware update. Do check the firmware of the drive at the download page, also keep the server's iDRAC/LCC and BIOS up to date. 

Page: https://www.dell.com/support/product-details/en-ed/product/poweredge-t430/drivers

@DELL-Joey C​ Hi, the drives in question are not Intel drives. I would consider firmware being the issue but the firmware on the drives and Perc were last updated at least a couple of years ago, the system has been installed for six years and this problem only began to occur in the last month.

Jaberwockysnicksnack,

While the issue doesn't appear to match the one presented by Joey, my suggestion would still be to ensure that the server is completely up to date, as those updates were created generally to address problems. So I would start with updating the BIOS, iDrac, Perc, and drives (if available on support.dell for the server). That will help ensure that the issue isn't something addressed in one of the updates, if that doesn't work then we can move forward from there, but that eliminates some variables. 

If updating the firmware of all devices has no impact on the problem are there any additional tools to try to narrow down the problem so I am not throwing parts on it that may or may not be involved?

Hi,

There aren't much tools to use to narrow down the issue cause, probably a need to check on PERC logs to see if there are any traces to where the SSD are in removed status. I've seen also in RAID container issue, where the parity are causing it. 

Even so, the article may not be related to your issue, engineering did identify the issue was caused by firmware relation.

If the system has been working since six years ago and the problem only began recently, I am leaning towards the RAID parity, but this is just a hunch. Probably best to have the PERC log analyzed by the support group with a case raised. 

This server is no longer under a maintenance contract so unfortunately engaging support directly for more assistance in troubleshooting it is not an option.

Another option to consider, if you have another matching T430, then you can test this server by individually swapping out known good parts and see if the issue persists. So you can try swapping the backplane out, or cables, etc. I would just do them one at a time, that way you can confirm each part, or are able to identify the issue. . 

I don't have another T430 unfortunately. At this point with the server being six years old but still being otherwise completely serviceable I might have to break down and spend the money to replace it with a newer generation unit, put it into a backup role and then I have the flexibility to troubleshoot the hardware as needed.

Hi,

If the server is no longer under contract, perhaps if needed, you can refer to this article to retrieve the TTYLOG for your own analysis: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-my/000177280/how-to-use-the-poweredge-raid-controller-perc-command-line-interface-cli-utility-to-manage-your-raid-controller

Tentatively, I would suggest monitoring the situation.