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Unknown devices on HP servers

Giuliano — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:14:51 +0000

Following up on the “Unknown devices on IBM servers” post, let me talk about a similar situation with HP machines (DL180 G6, in my case).

The device that Windows fails to identify is this one:

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3A22&CC_0106

More info can be found by looking up the IDs in the pci.ids file (as I often do), or by means of the various “Unkown Device Identifier” type of software (e.g. this one). If you have a Linux machine at hand, such a one-liner may suit you:

# sed -n -e '/^8086/,/3a22/p' /usr/share/misc/pci.ids | sed -n -e '1p;$p'
8086 Intel Corporation
3a22 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SATA AHCI Controller

What’s missing is an Intel SATA driver; needless to say that you won’t find it anywere on HP site.
I downloaded and installed the Rapid Storage Technology Driver from Intel’s web site (here). A 280KB download named “STOR_all32_f6flpy_9.6.0.1014_PV.zip” fixed things up for me.
Maybe the proper thing to try would’ve been the latest (March 2010) Proliant Support Pack, but it’s a big download and I didn’t have the time. Also, the onboard SATA controller isn’t really used (the additional SAS RAID is, instead) and I just wanted to get rid of the yellow warning sign in Device Manager.

The offline ACU CD

Giuliano — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:03:12 +0000

Well hidden in their labyrinthian web site, you may stumble upon HP’s “Array Configuration Utility (ACU) Offline CD for Smart Array”. A plain bootable CD, useful when ACU simply can’t be installed on the server/OS.
Example: I needed to tweak SSP (Selective Storage Presentation) settings on an MSA1000, connected through Fiber Channel HBAs (QLogic) to some rather old HP DL580 G2. The servers were running VMware ESX 3i 3.5.0 build-207095 (the latest one compatibile with those kind of CPUs) with no management agents installed. Since the MSA1000 can only be managed “in-band” or via a non standard serial cable the Customer, of course, lost long ago, I rebooted an ESX host with the offline ACU CD…
Before that, I also tried a standard SmartStart CD, but it didn’t work. I had version 7.80 (way younger than the servers/HBAs), but no link lights on the FC switch, meaning no firmware loaded on the QLogic card, meaning no SmartStart supported HBA drivers. Offline ACU CD version 8.20.19 worked like a charm instead. Find its latest release by searching “array configuration utility” on hp.com, clicking on “Download software”, then “Linux GUI ACU”. Download link is somewhere in that page…