Ran into a most interesting problem. Had a rash of HP DL360 G4p servers with the embedded 6i SCSI host adapter that would not recognize any hard drive plugged in. It first started with the warning when you rebooted that the SCSI adapter warning was having “cabling problems”.

While I was trying to figure out the cabling issue, and swapping hard drives that lead to the systems not seeing the drives at all [hey, that’s worse! At least before, I could see the drives.], it turns out the back plane that the SCSI hard drives plug into is not secure. Yes, boys and girls, HP engineers made some mistakes [and you thought DELL and IBM had the corner on mistakes]. The back plane floats…

If you look at the back plane, it plugs into the Mother board at the front middle of the server. The back plane’s plug is pushed down into the Mother boards SCSI connector. If this comes loose, you get the “cabling problems” [o.k. HP, you didn’t lie, but the naked eye can’t see this]. If it really gets back, your hard drives will not spin up or be recognized by the 6i controller. The 6i Controller will say “no physical drives found”.

So, if you run into that issue, unplug your server from the power, open the top, push the SCSI back plane down where the back plane plug touches the mother board and you should be back in business…

Now to go fix at least 3 servers with this issue… Wonder how many other people run into this and ended up returning the server after shipment?