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An email from Bill about a problem he had with his Compaq DL580 G1, a midrange server that he uses for his PeopleSoft application.

Hi Martin,

I wondered if you could help me with our DL580 G1. I know the server has an onboard array controller, the Smart Integrated Array controller, however we use a Smart Array 5300 to host the array, the onboard controller is disabled.

Anyway, the 5300 controller has failed, any ideas how I can get the server back up? It boots doesn’t load the 5300 controller and goes to a blank dos screen.

Can I just swap the controller and would I need to reload the drivers, will I loose the configuration?

Regards

Bill”

Hi Bill,

Great to hear from you. We’ll answer each issue separately to keep thing simple, and hopefully I will cover everything.

1. You could try using a floppy disk with the array controller firmware on it, or the HP Firmware disk to see if the array controller will work after a firmware refresh – though it does sound like it might have failed.
2. Enable the onboard array controller – providing the existing driver is loaded in the operating system you should be able to boot from that controller and that should be able to read your existing configuration (it depends what the disk configuration is like a disk shelf etc)
3. Replace the existing controller with another Smart Array 5300  is easy, just switch off the server, remove the SCSI cable and the controller, plug in the replacement controller, connect the cable and power on the server. You would not need to reload the drivers. Pressing F8 when the controller is loading will allow you to view the configuration.
4. Replacing the controller with another one, or using the onboard controller should not result in any data loss as the configuration is retained on the controller and the disks.

Let me know how you get on, my number is below in the email signature.

Regards

Martin

There’s an article about an array failure on the Compaq Proliant DL580 here.

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