PERK 6/i replacement

Question

The problem, two of the RAID disks failed at the same time. I hope it's just the RAID card gone bad. I'm lucky and could get my hands on three replacements, for free. The question, some of the numbers (on stickers) are not the same on the old card and the three replacements. How can I tell witch of the new cards has the newest...Everything? or the best match? Google is not being my friend, Linux forums don't seem to have much, Tom's Hardware has nothing related. Any advice and/or links to good info would be greatly appreciated.   I guess the other question I should be asking... When the replacement card is in, how do I tell it the 'missing disks' are back? I see there's a section on 'Physical Disk Failures and Rebuilds', p121, Table 7-5. in:   Dell™ PERC 6/i, PERC 6/E and CERC 6/i User’s Guide

speedstep · Accepted Answer

@imWACC0

@Dell -Charles R

Missing disks will not return. Best method is to remove all drives noting which port aka 1 2 3 4.

Then put new drives in. Initialize the new drives and container.

Load the bios and make the raid container

Then note which bad drive is which and replace them one at a time.

The container will start rebuilding by itself when the correct initialized drive is replaced for the bad drive.

All of this is done from the RAID ROM BIOS not the os.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000139093/

This 20-digit number contains a lot of helpful information, such as the manufacturing date and part number.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-dm/000139589

PPID
CN-0T774H-13740-18L-03L2-A06   AUG 2011
CN-0T954J-13740-1AN-150B-A06 OCT 2011
CN-0T954J-13740-271-07A5-A07   JUL   2012
CN-0T95AJ-13740-259-030X-A07   MAY 2012

PPID KR IS KOREA CN IS CHINA

Every Dell PPID number contains five separate sets of information for a total of 20-digits.

Country of Origin (underlined blue in Figure 1)
Dell Five-Digit Part Number
(the first 0 is a filler number since all Dell part numbers are five digits, underlined green in Figure 1)
Manufacture Identification
Date Code (Year, Month, Date) (underlined red in Figure 1)
Alphanumeric Manufacture Sequence Identification Number (rev)

Year

0 2000/2010/2020
1 2001/2011/2021
2 2002/2012/2022
3 2003/2013/2023
4 2004/2014/2024
5 2005/2015/2025
6 2006/2016/2026
7 2007/2017/2027
8 2008/2018/2028
9 2009/2019/2029

Month

1 January
2 February
3 March
4 April
5 May
6 June
7 July
8 August
9 September
A October
B November
C December

Day

1 1st
2 2nd
3 3rd
4 4th
5 5th
6 6th
7 7th
8 8th
9 9th
A 10th
B 11th
C 12th
D 13th
E 14th
F 15th
G 16th
H 17th
I 18th
J 19th
K 20th
L 21st
M 22nd
N 23rd
O 24th
P 25th
Q 26th
R 27th
S 28th
T 29th
U 30th
V 31st

speedstep · Accepted Answer

@imWACC0

All of them can have the firmware updated so its a wash.

Being over 10 years old means they are End of life End of support anyway.

The CTRL R raid prep work is the same regardless of which one you use. You have to have a valid container to install anything on.

The OS sees anything attached as a single drive. The F6 mass storage drivers are not optional for windows installs.

DELL-Charles R · Answer

Hello imWACC0,

I'm sorry to see you have two failed disks.

How did you determine it is a bad controller card?

If you can provide me the numbers you have I can find what part it is.

What is your system model?

It would be best to review the controller log, if the original controller is installed or look through the DRAC System event log or the LifeCycle Controller log, to find out what is going on with the drives/controller.

See if you can run the system diagnostics:

Reboot Press F10 in top right corner. Once the USC loads, select ‘Hardware Diagnostics’ in the left side and click ‘Run Diags’ in the body.

When the next page loads there will be 2 test available to run:

Then run the 'Run Diags' select 'Express Test'. Report any errors. Note any messages and continue testing.

If you were to use a different controller; The disk configuration is stored on the controller and the hard drives. If you are replacing the controller card it should import the array or give you a foreign configuration that you would then import.

With two failed drives; Is your virtual disk failed?

You may consider if this data is important, and you do not have a backup, you may consider a data recovery company to recover your data.

Check the steps on this document to see if you can get the array to import.

RETAG is an option but use with caution. Do Not Initialize the array when you retag.

https://dell.to/3aV1p9g

imWACC0 · Answer

'How did you determine it is a bad controller card?'   I did not, but that would be the best outcome. It's my working theory at the moment.   'can provide me the numbers' See photos above For the purposes of this exercise, the original card is numbed '1', the other cards were each randomly assigned numbers 2-4.   F1: A little hard to read. Normal disclaimer about ambiguous characters (O0Q,1lI, B86.2Z...why does anyone still use these?!). CN-0T774H-13740-18L-03L2-A06 CN-0T95AJ-13740-259-030X-A07 CN-0T954J-13740-1AN-150B-A06 CN-0T954J-13740-271-07A5-A07   F2 05BB 05BC 05BC 05BC   F3 UN238 A08-00 EC86 CT411 A09-00 8E1E CT411 A08-00 EC86 CT411 S09-00 8E1E   B1 No evidence of label JT167-259-00JQ JT167-1AN-0254 JT167-274-00L9   B2 Sorry, just noticed they're all the same.   What is your system model?    Precision T7500 TAG: [Moderator removed private information]   if the original controller is installed    Sorry, it's not and the heatsink has been removed.   Is your virtual disk failed?    Yes, it's 4 disk and half are missing.

DELL-Charles R · Answer

Thank you imWACC0. I see this is a workstation Precision T7500. I will move your thread for you to the correct board. Please note I removed the service as that is private information.

speedstep · Answer

step-by-step-guide-to-configure-hardware-raid-on-dell-servers-with-screenshots Press CTRL R to get into the PERC 6i bios https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp7XV2x-CZc

imWACC0 · Answer

@speedstep  Thank you for the info. Do you have a recommendation on which replacement to use? Original A06   AUG 2011 Nearest match A06  OCT  2011 Newest A07   JUL   2012

imWACC0 · Answer

@Dell -Charles RWhy would you move this out of RAID forum? This question is about a part that is used in servers AND workstations. In fact, I personally pulled the replacement boards out of servers in a electronics recycling warehouse. Regardless of what the card is going into, it came out of a server. The entire question is about the card and the BIOS for the card.

mazzinia_ · Answer

There's a basic thing about raid configurations : if you have multiple disks produced the same moment and from the same plant ( thing that can happen if buying a bunch of them at the same time from the same outlet and from the same maker ), the chance of having more than one fail at the same time, is actually not negligible.

Thus if the 2 you have that failed are same brand same production date, it could be reasonably a concurrent failure.

mazzinia_ · Answer

If I may ask, you never mentioned which raid level is being used

imWACC0 · Answer

I agree, the MTtF can be a spike. I try to avoid that when I can...however I'm a disabled vet on a fixed income. I managed to get the T7500 for free, and paid vary low prices for the CPUs and RAM (Yes I have the 2nd CPU)

You are probably right, but I'm trying the long shot that it's the card. It's odd that 2 would fail at the same time, but happens often enough that it's well known.

All I have to lose on this is my mind (-:

imWACC0 · Answer

It's been a wile, but I think RAID 5...but might be RAID 6

mazzinia_ · Answer

Well, if raid 5 ( and 2 disks missing ) , you lost the array data. If raid 6, the 2 disks are the maximum fault allowed that would let you reconstruct the data Do you have backups ?

Precision Fixed Workstations

PERK 6/i replacement

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