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We have a DELL R510 server where we replaced all the hard drives with new but non-certified 3TB disks. Now OpenManage throws a warning for every hard disk as "non-critical", since it recognizes the unsupported drives. Is there any way to acknowledge these warnings? Those warnings are thrown again at reboot, and I fear they could someday cover up a really important warning, which then will be overlooked.

The following warnings are logged: (just 2 examples, there is a corresponding warning for each of the 12 drives)

  • Controller event log: PD 04(e0x20/s4) is not a certified drive: Controller 0 (PERC H700 Integrated)
  • Disk found is not supplied by an authorized hardware provider: Physical Disk 0:0:8 Controller 0, Connector 0

Research at OpenManage and Dell Community did not bring up anything usefull.

HannesS
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4 Answers4

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Unfortunately, there is no way to both turn off these warnings, and still get any other hard drive alerts from Dell Open Manage. This is a major flaw in their system that they consider a "feature" to vendor lock you into their certified drives.

I have a server that Dell sold me direct, that came with "non-certified" drives in it. So the server sits in a constant amber state because of this and they refuse to fix it. It was one of the reasons I stopped buying from Dell.

To work around this issue, I have found that Dell writes to the event logs when a bad drive is detected. Instead of relying on Open Manage directly to tell me when there's a bad drive, we monitor our event logs for:

Log: System
Event Type: Error
Event IDs: 2057, 2048, 2123

This works very well for watching for failed drives. Having said that, I don't believe if it will alert you on the non-certified drives.

Chris Satola
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From Here is

Edit C:\Program Files\Dell\SysMgt\sm\stsvc.ini
and change NonDellCertifiedFlag=no

kenlukas
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Anony
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  • Another detailed write up of this is here [the case of non certified physical drives causing warnings in dell openmanage omsa/](https://toughtechsite.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/the-case-of-non-certified-physical-drives-causing-warnings-in-dell-openmanage-omsa/). Importantly if you use OpenManage from Linux you can edit this setting in the file `/opt/dell/srvadmin/etc/srvadmin-storage/stsvc.ini` and change the value of `NonDellCertifiedFlag` there. – Jason Harris Nov 27 '21 at 03:43
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I turned off Storage System Warning (I don't think this one throws it though), Storage Controller Warning and Physical Disk Warning in OpenManage Server Admin under Alert Management. This has stopped the "error" messages from popping up on the console. I've not checked the Windows Event Viewer yet, but I don't really care if it doesn't like the disks, as long as it doesn't disable them, which it hasn't.

I have a Dell R510 as well that I just put 6x4TB WD RE drives in.

DBurton
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While you really SHOULDN'T use non-certified drives, or ignore warnings, I think that server admins should have access to the knowledge to manage and configure their environments as they see fit, even if it may be to their own detriment. With that being said, you can disable the certified drive checks by following the info on this page: https://toughtechsite.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/the-case-of-non-certified-physical-drives-causing-war...

Standard responsibility disclaimer applies, not recommended, may void warranty, may negate availability of Dell assistance, etc. But for others who are ok with these risks, and/or are out of warranty support period anyway, you now have the information necessary to get rid of the unnecessary warning.

Side note for Dell: there really should be a way to disable these non-critical, arbitrary warnings in OMSA. I've missed ACTUAL VALID warnings because i got used to seeing the non-certified warning triangle in OMSA. You shouldn't be "Crying Wolf" when it comes to things like server administration.

Josh Moore
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