[ale] Super Micro woes - Middle riser not working

[Lightner, Jeffrey]

We have a system with a Super Micro MB model X10DRU-i+.

The 4 PCI slots in the right riser (when viewed from back of unit) are all functional.

The PCI slot at the top of the middle riser does not appear to be functional at all. I had attempted to put an HBA in this slot and another in slot 3 of the right riser. On boot the HBA in slot 3 of the right riser was recognized and I was able to configure it in my OS and it was shown by Linux lspci. However the other HBA placed in the top slot of the middle riser did not show up in POST or in lspci.

On swapping those 2 HBAs between each other the one that previously did not show up in POST or lspci now shows up in both. However, the one moved to the middle riser's top PCI slot no longer shows up in lspci even though the kernel driver for it loaded successfully.

Additionally we previously found the 2 x RJ45 ports (ostensibly 10 GigE copper) at the base of the middle riser did not get link lights when attached to a switch.

I suspect there is an issue with this riser but the manual for this mother board doesn't really help me much and doesn't appear to specifically discuss the riser configurations.

Does anyone know where I could find documentation on such a riser?

Has anyone seen this issue and gotten it resolved?

Is there an local (Atlanta Metro) source for Super Micro based servers and/or replacement parts?

Server is running RHEL 6.8.

Please do not suggest as the seller's laughable tech support has:

1)      Reseating the riser or the HBA.   The riser got reseated each time I put in an HBA because one must remove the riser to do that.  Also once I realized the issue was the riser I of course paid special attention to reseating it yet again.

2)      PCI bus flooding based on the HBAs installed in the right riser.   I might believe that if my issue was data flow after boot of the OS but it wouldn't explain why the network ports weren't working before I added new HBAs nor why the BIOS on the HBA is not shown during POST unless it is in the right riser.

3)      Returning the entire unit.   We can't really have this system down for 30 days.

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