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Conflicting advice on how to properly cable a HBA355e card to a PowerVault
Hi everyone,
Dell says here that the HBA355e card is designed with two groups of ports (ports 0, 1 in one group, and ports 2, 3 in another group)
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000204705/powervault-me5-series-report-host-port-degraded-when-connected-to-dell-hba355e-sas-controller
They clearly instruct you to distribute your SAS cables by putting one in each group.
However, the manual of the HBA355e card in page 14 says EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE! They say to NOT distribute the cable and put them all in the same group!
https://dl.dell.com/content/manual37111759-dell-host-bus-adapter-user-s-guide-hba-355-and-350-series.pdf?language=en-us
Who's right here? The webpage? Or the manual? Who's lying and who's telling the truth??
DELL-Chris H
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December 17th, 2024 20:46
Since its has an ME5 on the other end, I would suggest you use one of the bottom 4 from this diagram for the host side HBA cabling.
0 and 2 like the far left is good, 1 and 3 is good, any of those 4 bottom combinations.
Either of the top 2 cablings like (0 and 1) or (2 and 3) will cause some intermittent degraded connections.
DELL-Chris H
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December 17th, 2024 16:58
Filament,
Would you do me a favor and clarify the specific devices you are working with?
I ask as you are comparing a kb about an ME5 (rbod) issue with the HBA, to an HBA manual page that is talking about ME484 jbods and MD24 jbods. For your actual use case you're asking about a "powervault" with no specific model. Knowing what device is being used, and what you are trying to do would help us know which documentation applies best.
Let me know.
Filament
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December 17th, 2024 17:14
@DELL-Chris H OK, my setup is currently like this:
Two PowerEdge R6525 servers with one HBA355e card in each server.
One PowerVault ME5012 with two active controllers installed.
I have four Dell GYK61 cables in total.
I believe that the optimal configuration for balancing I/O would be to use ports 0 and 2 in each Powervault controller, as recommended here:
https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/en-us/l/dell-powervault-me5-series-vmware-vsphere-best-practices/physical-port-selection/
But I don't know which ports should I use in the HBA355e adapters!
Filament
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December 17th, 2024 22:39
@DELL-Chris H Thanks for the clarification! Much appreciated!