Power Loss on One JBOD in a Chain May Cause Data Integrity Issues When Connected to an Older Non-RAID SAS

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Power Loss on One JBOD in a Chain May Cause Data Integrity Issues When Connected to an Older Non-RAID SAS HBA

1. Impact

In certain cases with chained SAS or SATA JBODs (disk arrays) connected to a host using an SG-XPCIE8SAS-E-Z card (375-3487-01), a very rare condition can occur in which a power failure on one of the JBODs may cause data integrity issues on a different JBOD.  The probability of this issue was found to be extremely small.

2. Contributing Factors

This issue can occur on the following platform:

• Sun StorageTek SAS HBA (SG-XPCIE8SAS-E-Z HBA,  PN 375-3487-01) with rev B1 LSI 1068E ASIC

when connected to two or more chained JBODs.

Notes:

1. This issue can occur only when power loss to one of the JBODs occurs.

2. Only HBAs with a manufacturing part number of 375-3487-01 contain the B1 revision of the LSI ASIC.

3. HBAs with a manufacturing part number of 375-3487-02 or higher are not affected by this issue.

4. The firmware version on an installed HBA in a running system can be used to infer the part number on the HBA by following the steps in the "Resolution" section below.

3. Symptoms

Loss of recently written/modified data may occur.

4. Workaround

To avoid this issue, install SATA JBODs with UPS backup power available.  Do not power off SATA JBODs without properly quiescing I/O from the host system.

5. Resolution

This issue is addressed on the following platform:

• Sun StorageTek SAS HBAs 375-3487-02 or later

To determine the firmware version of the HBA:

The product part number is displayed on the HBA itself. To check in a running system, it must be inferred from the firmware version on a card. Specific instructions (below) can be used to detect the firmware version.

SOLARIS: The firmware revision is a property named 'firmware-version' of the device in the output of 'prtconf -vp'.  Since this output can be difficult to decode, an alternative solution is to use the findHBA script contained in the LSI firmware update package.  This package can be found at http://www.lsi.com/support/sun/.  See the README.solaris file for guidance on how to run the detection utility to detect the firmware version.

OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS: The firmware version is displayed in the output of the LSI "sasflash" utility.  This utility is contained in the LSI firmware update package, which can be found at http:/ www.lsi.com/support/sun.  See the README file for guidance on how to run the sasflash utility to detect the firmware version.

In either case: if the firmware revision is displayed as 01.23.04.00 or higher, then the card is 375-3487-02 or higher and is not susceptible to this issue. Otherwise, the card is 375-3487-01 and may be suspectible to this issue in a multi-JBOD environment.

Please see the following support documents and release notes for more information:

375-3487-01 is not supported on Sun Storage J4200/J4400 Arrays as an HBA per 820-3222-latest release notes:

http://docs.sun.com/source/820-3222-11/J4200_J4400_ReleaseNote_chapter.html#50548750_53386

375-3487-01 is not supported on J4500 Arrays as an HBA per 820-3162-latest release notes:

http://docs.sun.com/source/820-3162-10/chapter1.html#d0e250

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