NetApp 4246 Disk Slot 0 Help

[rsk2832]

I recently bought a NetApp 4246 and am using SATA drives (details below) with no interposers and hooking a QSFP+ to 8088 cable from NetApp top IOM to LSI SAS9207-8e HBA in my HP Z440 workstation running Ubuntu.

When I install the SATA drives in any port other than the upper left drive slot (what I call Slot 0) they are all recognized by the LSI 9207 and I see them in Ubuntu. If I install a drive in Slot 0, even by itself with no other drives in the NetApp, the Option ROM window for the LSI 9207 sits and spins "Initializing" forever. When I remove the drive from Slot 0 the workstation boots fine and all drives are recognized.

1 - 500 GB SATA Drive (Tested in Slot 0 with no other drives installed)

1 - 640 GB SATA Drive

1 - 2 TB SATA Drive

9 - 18 TB SATA Drives (Tested one of these in Slot 0 with and without other drives installed)

Am I missing something here? Is there something special I have to do to get a drive to work in Slot 0?

Thanks in advance for any help that can be provided.

Ryan

[Ontapforrum]

Are you trying to use the DiskShelf 4246 with Ubuntu ? I am sorry to say but the NetApp disk shelfs are meant to be used with the NetApp Storage (proprietary) Operating System. You could use the Linux OS as an end-client to access the Storage (file-system) via applicable protocols (NAS/SAN), but not directly. It may or may not work, but it is not supported.

[SpindleNinja]

I would post this over at /r/homelabs.   This kinda thing isn't offically supported.   

[rsk2832]

Thanks for the replies.  I realize this is not supported.

I posted the same topic in homelabs last week.  No one knows why it isn't working, even though I've seen many YouTube videos of people done this exact thing with the same HBA and it works right out of the box.

I'm just looking for some theorization from the smart people, even though this isn't a supported configuration, it is one that has been proven to work.

[AlexDawson]

Does the same thing happen if you have only one drive in slot 1? The two slots are used for in-band SCSI enclosure services communications

[rsk2832]

Thanks for the reply.

No, the issue only happens when a drive is in Slot 0.  If I put a single drive in any other slot it works fine.  I took a single known good drive and put in every slot one at a time, power cycling in between.  When the drive was in Slot 0 it caused the HBA to lock up.  I also put multiple known good drives in slots other than Slot 0 at the same time and it booted just fine.

[rsk2832 · Accepted solution]

So, the 9207-8e card I was using was actually a HP H221 9207-8e version of the card that had an old rev 0x1 of the 2308 chipset on it with really old v15 firmware on it.  I suspected that might be the issue, so I ordered an actual LSI 9207-8e card that has v20 firmware on it and that fixed the problem.  So, the issue was using a really old version of the 9207-8e HBA card.

Thanks for all the replies and thoughts.  My issue is now resolved.