The professional blog of Christopher Randel

Dell Support Round Three

This is pretty genuinely terrifying. Enterprise class stuff that doesn’t seem to be well tested. Running 10K SAS Seagate Drives … and this guy sends me a disk that updates the firmware to just about every enterprise class disk out there.

System – You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat

Derrick – Hello, thank you for contacting Dell’s Enterprise Chat Support. My name is Chris. Once the chat session is completed, a transcript will be sent to chris.randel. Please give me 2 to 3 minutes to access your system details and contact information.

Chris – Hi Derrick. I’ve got another failed hard drive from this system I need to rma.

Derrick – How can I help you today? Please provide as much information as possible, such as error messages, symptoms, and any troubleshooting steps that may have been taken up to this point.

Chris – One of the hard disks was failed and trying to reinitialize over and over. I’ve replaced it with a spare.

Derrick – Can you confirm the address that this needs to go to?

Derrick – [Address]

Chris  - something like that.

Derrick – One moment while i get this setup..

Derrick – Since this is your 2nd problem within a few weeks i would make sure you have all the drivers/firmware update for the system.

Derrick – Especially the firmware specifically for the hard drives.

Chris – do you have a link i can go about checking that?

Derrick – http://ftp.us.dell.com/SATA/DELL_MULTI-DEVICE_A09_R211868.EXE

Chris – hmm. its a FreeBSD box

Derrick – That fine, this creates a bootable CD for the hard drive firmware.

Derrick – neat. i’ll try that out

Derrick – I just figured the whole batch of disks is going slowly. We have two of these PE2950s that are identicle, and they both have been throwing about one disk a week for the last two weeks.

Chris – Using both for developing environments in VM.

Derrick – Yea, that could be part of the reason is the firmware..

Derrick – There has been numerous occasions with some of the SAS and SATA drives that had problem with the amber light and basically reseating the drive would fix it only for a short time but the firmware is what helped it be more stable.

Chris – Seems strange the firmware would fail after they have been up for the last two years? I’ll check out this firmware updated, though.

Derrick – That link i gave you above is for multiple drives so if you have other SAS/SATA drives in other systems both newer or older then your current one it will work on that as well.

Chris – Excellent. I will try it out.

Derrick – Yea, there is no way to predict it, weve had some take years before problems occur and some only take a few weeks..

Chris – Gotta love that >:

Derrick – I’ll have that case for you in a moment, almost done with that..

Chris – No problem.

Chris – Case# 803471993

Derrick – Thanks for waiting, that took a bit longer then i expected.

Chris – Okay. No problem.

Derrick – So you should see that drive there tomorrow in the AM hours.

Derrick – Sounds good.

Chris – I’ll use this diagnostic tool as well.

Derrick – Other then that when you get a chance to reboot i would make sure to apply that firmware update for the drives, that will help out in the long run.

Chris – No problem.

Derrick – Other then that are you set for now?

Chris – Yessir.

Chris – Thanks for your help.