CSCvr34864 - C240 M4 | SAS expander shows absent, and no SAS FW is observed after server FW upgrade to 4.0

[alan.harrington]

Seems this is not a good sign, happens on 4.1 as well, sever is now a brick with nothing to do for it, warranty ran out on device last week. thoughts?

[mike.whitney2015]

Alan,

Yes I can confirm that the same thing happens with 4.1.1f huu.  Followed all directions and I have a brick and no support contract, I was attempting to upgrade to solve any Flash and Java vulnerabilities.  I am working with a C240-M4S2, the SAS Expansion seems to be discovered according to the log when I boot to the HUU but it doesn't show any drives which you are supposed to do after the CIMC and BIOS upgrades as recommended in the release notes and I believe there was a popup about that as well.

Very frustrated at this point.  I am going to try to go back to the old CIMC and BIOS before I give up and part the thing out.

[mike.whitney2015]

I believe I figured it out for us.  The wording is completely off on the popup, it should read only upgrade the CIMC first and restart the HUU process.  I just tried that with another C240 I had in the lab and after a couple reboots it did boot back into the HUU and discover the SAS Expander and it was in the list to update, at that point I did an Update All and it came back up so far so good.  So I am going to test to see if I can revert back only the BIOS and boot up into HUU to see if I get the same option.  You should have CIMC access at least to revert back in the Firmware Management section?

I will reply back with my results on the original C240 and some screensnaps if possible.

[mike.whitney2015]

Was not successful to even see the SAS Expander once I went back to the old BIOS firmware, I am still working on it as I plan on reverting back to the old CIMC as well to see if I can get the message to pop back up, what I think I am needing to do is go back to an older version of the HBA controller firmware but I have to figure out where to access that FW from.  Without support might be SOL.  Wish I could help out more, if I do find a solution I will be sure to reply in this thread.

[alan.harrington]

I always upgrade my cimc first, just an old habit from the drac days... I couldn't even see in the logs were it's detected anymore. do you have an exert? I have another c240 m4 so i'm going to swap some things around and see what I can't see as well. Good luck! ps - i got an expander off ebay for 90 bucks and then flashed it to the 3.x train and then to 4.x and have had success that way.

[mike.whitney2015]

I went back to the old 2.x firmware across the board, could not get the SAS Expander to show up at all and even attempted to go up to the 3.x with no luck.  I have pulled the memory for extra in the other server that works.  Suppose I will use the rest of the drives and power supplies as spares if needed.  Everything looks good so far on the other machine with the 4.x, crossing my fingers since we have no hardware support.  Cheers