Thanks for the reply, one last question, what was the reason for changing the controllers? Was it purely bandwidth, or is there a reliability issue with the original NetApp controller?

Also, my setup is in our spare bedroom, is there any hacks to make these units quieter?

Patrick

On 11/4/2019 at 12:59 PM, crowdx42 said:

Thanks for the reply, one last question, what was the reason for changing the controllers? Was it purely bandwidth, or is there a reliability issue with the original NetApp controller?

Also, my setup is in our spare bedroom, is there any hacks to make these units quieter?

Patrick

This thread is essentially a log of all the work I did to my shelf and why. I changed the controller because, as noted in the title, my preclears kept failing while writing the signature. Instead of spending more time trying to figure out if it was the NetApp controller or the NetApp HBA, I decided to just replace both at the same time. 

Thank you so much for the documentation. I just ran into this same issue with a DS4246 and the NetApp HBA and have already bought the Dell controllers and an LSI 9201-16e yesterday out of desperation. This now confirms I’m not crazy nor the one person that’s had this issue. I just wish I would have found this post a week ago before spending all the time researching the problem that nobody else seemed to have. I have even went so far as to RMA the HBA, DS4246, and the QSFP cable. The new ones of those will be here Saturday but the Dell and LSI stuff won’t be here until Monday. 
 

Also I did get my drives formatted but during boot/starting of the array drives would drop out randomly and I’d have to pull them out and reinsert them hoping they’d show up correctly. 

Edited May 1, 20206 yr by jrprinty
Added more info.

10 hours ago, jrprinty said:

Thank you so much for the documentation. I just ran into this same issue with a DS4246 and the NetApp HBA and have already bought the Dell controllers and an LSI 9201-16e yesterday out of desperation. This now confirms I’m not crazy nor the one person that’s had this issue. I just wish I would have found this post a week ago before spending all the time researching the problem that nobody else seemed to have. I have even went so far as to RMA the HBA, DS4246, and the QSFP cable. The new ones of those will be here Saturday but the Dell and LSI stuff won’t be here until Monday. 
 

Also I did get my drives formatted but during boot/starting of the array drives would drop out randomly and I’d have to pull them out and reinsert them hoping they’d show up correctly. 

You're welcome. Glad it's helped some-body save time/money. 

Quick question on the Dell controllers. Did you replace both IOM6 controllers with two Dell controllers or just one and leave the second in place? I also am using the Netapp HBA with an IOM3 controller and have similar issues so am looking to perform a similar upgrade.

 

Word to the wise: the Netapp HBA's price might be tempting, but its just not worth it....