NetApp DS4243 and LSI 9201-16e missing SMART values

[eexodus]

I have a NetApp DS4243 with 14x 8TB WD Reds connected to a LSI 9201-16e via a QSFP+ to SAS cable inside a Dell PowerEdge R610. Whenever I pull the SMART status for these drives there's only a few values available, temp, power on count. Is it normal to have so little values? Should I be concerned that FreeNAS might not detect a failing drive?

Code:

smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [FreeBSD 11.1-STABLE amd64] (local build)															 
Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org														 
																																   
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===																								
Vendor:			   WDC																										   
Product:			  WD80EFZX-68UW8SM																							 
Revision:			 4321																										 
User Capacity:		8,001,563,222,016 bytes [8.00 TB]																			 
Logical block size:   512 bytes																									 
Physical block size:  4096 bytes																									
Rotation Rate:		5400 rpm																									 
Form Factor:		  3.5 inches																									
Logical Unit id:	  0x500605ba005efb30																							
Serial number:		XXXXXXXX																									 
Device type:		  disk																										 
Transport protocol:   SAS (SPL-3)																								   
Local Time is:		Mon Jul 23 11:51:33 2018 EDT																				 
SMART support is:	 Available - device has SMART capability.																	 
SMART support is:	 Enabled																									   
Temperature Warning:  Enabled																									   
																																   
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===																							
SMART Health Status: OK																											 
																																   
Current Drive Temperature:	 37 C																								 
Drive Trip Temperature:		65 C																								 
																																   
Manufactured in week 24 of year 2008																								
Specified cycle count over device lifetime:  65536																				 
Accumulated start-stop cycles:  22																								 
Read defect list: asked for grown list but didn't get it																			
Vendor (Seagate) cache information																								 
  Blocks sent to initiator = 0																									 
																																   
Error counter log:																												 
		  Errors Corrected by		   Total   Correction	 Gigabytes	Total												 
			  ECC		  rereads/	errors   algorithm	  processed	uncorrected											
		  fast | delayed   rewrites  corrected  invocations   [10^9 bytes]  errors												 
read:		  0		0		 0		 0		  0		  0.000		   0												 
write:		 0		0		 0		 0		  0		  0.000		   0												 
																																   
Non-medium error count:		0																									
																																   
No self-tests have been logged

 

[Chris Moore]

That

Whenever I pull the SMART status for these drives there's only a few values available, temp, power on count. Is it normal to have so little values?

That is the problem with SAS drives (my opinion) they don't give enough data to be useful with regard to SMART stats.

I would rather have SATA drives because of the details they give, but supposedly the SAS drives are better.

Should I be concerned that FreeNAS might not detect a failing drive?

I would be concerned, but I guess you will know when the first drive fails. Be sure to post back and tell us.

 

[eexodus]

That is the problem with SAS drives (my opinion) they don't give enough data to be useful with regard to SMART stats.

These are SATA drives in SAS interposers, but I guess that still applies.

 

[Johnnie Black]

They are being treated as SAS drives, and since they are SATA there's even less info than regular SAS drives.

 

[Chris Moore]

These are SATA drives in SAS interposers, but I guess that still applies.

I was curious about that, because I looked up the model number:

Code:

Vendor:			   WDC																										   
Product:			  WD80EFZX-68UW8SM																							

It comes back as being SATA, but the SAS interposer is doing a number on that.
If you look at the limited info you are getting there, it lists:

Code:

Device type:		  disk																										 
Transport protocol:   SAS (SPL-3)																								

Because the Transport Protocol is SAS, the "SMART" control software is probably what is formatting the data in the way that SAS data would be formatted. I have SATA drives connected directly to a SAS expander backplane and it gives me full SMART report data as if it were connected by SATA because the SATA data is packaged and transported by the SAS controller without being altered. The interposer is making your SATA drive appear as a SAS drive by doing some monkey business with the data before it hits the wire. It may be necessary that you keep the interposers because a SATA drive is only rated to operate on a 1 meter cable, where SAS drives can operate on a 10 meter cable and the difference in signalling is part of the reason for the interposer. The other thing is about multipathing / dual path controller for redundancy. Since that enclosure had facility for multipath, you probably need to have the interposer even if you are not using multipath.

 

[Chris Moore]

For reference: https://www.dell.com/community/Powe...oard-used-for/td-p/4241860#.W1YbUPjWz4I.gmail

 

[eexodus]

Yes the interposers are required. I wanted to test SMART functionality and not have to wait years for a drive to die so I put in a known failed drive to see what would happen. Although the SMART values are limited it looks like the main one, health status, still works just fine so I'm relived. Unfortunately I think having such limited SMART values will lessen the ability of FreeNAS to detect failing drives. Fortunately though because of ZFS I suspect it will still be obvious which drives are pre-failure due to checksums and scrubs ratting the failing drives out. See the failed drive SMART values below:

Code:

smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [FreeBSD 11.1-STABLE amd64] (local build)															
Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org														
																																 
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===																								
Vendor:			   Hitachi																									 
Product:			  HUA723030ALA64SM																							
Revision:			 4321																										
User Capacity:		3,000,592,982,016 bytes [3.00 TB]																			
Logical block size:   512 bytes																									
Rotation Rate:		7200 rpm																									
Form Factor:		  3.5 inches																									
Logical Unit id:	  0x500605ba005efef4																							
Serial number:		MK0351YHGBR5JA																								
Device type:		  disk																										
Transport protocol:   SAS (SPL-3)																								 
Local Time is:		Wed Jul 25 10:36:52 2018 EDT																				
SMART support is:	 Available - device has SMART capability.																	
SMART support is:	 Enabled																									 
Temperature Warning:  Enabled																									 
																																 
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===																							
SMART Health Status: HARDWARE IMPENDING FAILURE GENERAL HARD DRIVE FAILURE [asc=5d, ascq=10]										
																																 
Current Drive Temperature:	 36 C																								
Drive Trip Temperature:		60 C																								
																																 
Manufactured in week 24 of year 2008																								
Specified cycle count over device lifetime:  65536																				
Accumulated start-stop cycles:  20																								
Read defect list: asked for grown list but didn't get it																			
Vendor (Seagate) cache information																								
  Blocks sent to initiator = 0																									
																																 
Error counter log:																												
		  Errors Corrected by		   Total   Correction	 Gigabytes	Total												
			  ECC		  rereads/	errors   algorithm	  processed	uncorrected											
		  fast | delayed   rewrites  corrected  invocations   [10^9 bytes]  errors												
read:		  0		0		 0		 0		  0		  0.000		   0												
write:		 0		0		 0		 0		  0		  0.000		   0												
																																 
Non-medium error count:		0																									
																																 
No self-tests have been logged

 

[Johnnie Black]

it looks like the main one, health status, still works just fine

I wouldn't consider that the main one, a disk can be in very bad shape and still pass SMART global health, and you won't be notified of for example pending sectors, one of the most common ways of a disk failing.

Not sure if it will show the result of any SMART tests, it doesn't for the disks you used, do any of them have tests short or extended SMART tests logged?

 

[Chris Moore]

I have a NetApp DS4243

Is this gear that you bought or something you already have and you are trying to re-purpose it?

 

[eexodus]

-

I wish these did show pending sectors but hopefully ZFS and FreeNAS will rat on the dying drives once they start writing corrupt data. When I run extended tests they abort with:

Code:

smartctl -t long /dev/da1
Long (extended) foreground self test failed [aborted command]

smartctl -a /dev/da1
SMART Self-test log																												
Num  Test			  Status				 segment  LifeTime  LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]										
	Description							  number   (hours)																	
# 1  Default		   Aborted (device reset ?)	-	 450				 0 [0xb 0x40 0x82]

Short tests pass, here's an example:

Code:

smartctl -t short /dev/da2

smartctl -a /dev/da2
SMART Self-test log																												
Num  Test			  Status				 segment  LifeTime  LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]										
	Description							  number   (hours)																	
# 1  Default		   Completed				   -	 451				 - [-   -	-]

Is this gear that you bought or something you already have and you are trying to re-purpose it?

It is used gear I bought of eBay. The whole setup is just a few hundred dollars.

 

[Chris Moore]

It is used gear I bought of eBay. The whole setup is just a few hundred dollars.

It is tough to beat a low price, but it might cost you some ability to monitor the drives.
Later, when you are interested in getting something different, post up on the forum for suggestions.
It might cost a little more, but something like this would give you full diagnostic data from the drives:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPERMICRO-4U-45-BAY-SAS-SATA-II-RAID-CHASSIS/392086043372

 

[Johnnie Black]

ZFS will protect you better than most other options, still it will be handicapped the lack of SMART attribute monitoring and extended tests, I would at least run with the highest level of redundancy possible, like one or more RAIDZ3 VDEVs so you're better protected against multiple disk failures.

 

[eexodus]

I just confirmed that the SATA to SAS interposers I thought were required for using SATA disks in NetApp DS4243s actually aren't required. So I'm getting full SMART data from the drives now even without interposers and they have full functionality in other regards.