First things first, power off your server entirely and open the lid.  Locate the Smart Array card, near the back of the case, sitting in one of the PCI slots. It should look something like this (Fig. 1).

Fig. 2 – Detach the two SAS Cables

Once you have found the card, lift the blue tab that is locking it in place.  Detach the two SAS cables running to the front of the case from the top of the card (Fig. 2)and don’t forget to note which cord is which when attaching them to your new card.  If your machine is running battery-backed cache, make sure to detach the battery cable from the cache module shown in (Fig. 3).  Lastly, lift the card completely out of the slot.

Taking your new card, you will insert it directly down onto the socket and flush with the back of the machine.  It should secure in place, allowing you to lower the blue latch, fully securing it into the machine.

Fig. 3 – Detach Battery Cable from Cache Module

You will reattach the two SAS cables that are running from the front of the machine to the card.  Insure they are in the same slots as they were in with the last card.  Lastly, reattach the battery wire to the cache module and reseal the machine.

Now that we have the card replaced, we will be powering on the machine again.  As it’s going through post, you should see “initializing smart array controller” come up as one of the first parts of post.  After this is done initializing, you should see a couple different options.

Fig. 4 – Smart Array Firmware Screen

Hit F8 and you should arrive in the Smart Array firmware which will look something like this (Fig. 4).

Fig. 5 – View Logical Drive

Select the second option (View Logical Drive) and you should arrive at a screen like this (Fig. 5).  Make sure it says “OK” for status as shown in Figure 5.

Assuming all went as it should, exit the firmware and it should then boot right into your logical drive as it would’ve prior to the failure.

Hopefully you find this article helpful and informative in replacing your failed Smart Array controller on your DL380 G5 Server.