Dmesg Full of I/O Errors, SMART OK, Four Disks Affected – RedHat

I'm working on a remote server (Dell Poweredge) that was a new install. It has four drives (2TB) and 2 SSD's (250 GB). One SSD contains the OS (RHEL7) and the four mechanical disks are eventually going to contain an oracle database.

Trying to create a software RAID array led to disks constantly being marked as faulty. Checking dmesg outputs a slew of the following errors,

[127491.711407] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 3907026080
[127491.719699] sd 0:0:4:0: [sde] FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[127491.719717] sd 0:0:4:0: [sde] Sense Key : Aborted Command [current]
[127491.719726] sd 0:0:4:0: [sde] Add. Sense: Logical block guard check failed
[127491.719734] sd 0:0:4:0: [sde] CDB: Read(32)
[127491.719742] sd 0:0:4:0: [sde] CDB[00]: 7f 00 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 09 20 00 00 00 00 00
[127491.719750] sd 0:0:4:0: [sde] CDB[10]: e8 e0 7c a0 e8 e0 7c a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08
[127491.719757] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 3907026080
[127491.719764] Buffer I/O error on dev sde, logical block 488378260, async page read
[127497.440222] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[127497.440240] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] Sense Key : Aborted Command [current]
[127497.440249] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] Add. Sense: Logical block guard check failed
[127497.440258] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] CDB: Read(32)
[127497.440266] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] CDB[00]: 7f 00 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 09 20 00 00 00 00 00
[127497.440273] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] CDB[10]: 00 01 a0 00 00 01 a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08
[127497.440280] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdf, sector 106496
[127497.901432] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[127497.901449] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] Sense Key : Aborted Command [current]
[127497.901458] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] Add. Sense: Logical block guard check failed
[127497.901467] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] CDB: Read(32)
[127497.901475] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] CDB[00]: 7f 00 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 09 20 00 00 00 00 00
[127497.901482] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] CDB[10]: e8 e0 7c a0 e8 e0 7c a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08
[127497.901489] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdf, sector 3907026080
[127497.911003] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[127497.911019] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] Sense Key : Aborted Command [current]
[127497.911029] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] Add. Sense: Logical block guard check failed
[127497.911037] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] CDB: Read(32)
[127497.911045] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] CDB[00]: 7f 00 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 09 20 00 00 00 00 00
[127497.911052] sd 0:0:5:0: [sdf] CDB[10]: e8 e0 7c a0 e8 e0 7c a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08
[127497.911059] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdf, sector 3907026080
[127497.911067] Buffer I/O error on dev sdf, logical block 488378260, async page read

These errors occur for all of the four mechanical disks, (sdc/sdd/sde/sdf) SMARTctl passed all four disks, long and short tests. I'm currently running badblocks (write mode test ~35 hrs in, probably another 35 to go).

The following are the errors I've suspected/considered upon research

• Failed HDD – Seems unlikely that 4 "refurbished" disks would be DOA doesn't it?

• Storage Controller Issue (bad cable?) – Seems like it would affect the SSD's too?

  • Kernel issue, The only change to the stock kernel was the addition of kmod-oracleasm. I really don't see how it would cause these faults, ASM isn't set up at all.

Another noteworthy event was when trying to zero the disks (part of early troubleshooting), using the command $ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX yielded these errors,

dd: writing to ‘/dev/sdc’: Input/output error
106497+0 records in
106496+0 records out
54525952 bytes (55 MB) copied, 1.70583 s, 32.0 MB/s
dd: writing to ‘/dev/sdd’: Input/output error
106497+0 records in
106496+0 records out
54525952 bytes (55 MB) copied, 1.70417 s, 32.0 MB/s
dd: writing to ‘/dev/sde’: Input/output error
106497+0 records in
106496+0 records out
54525952 bytes (55 MB) copied, 1.71813 s, 31.7 MB/s
dd: writing to ‘/dev/sdf’: Input/output error
106497+0 records in
106496+0 records out
54525952 bytes (55 MB) copied, 1.71157 s, 31.9 MB/s

If anyone here could share some insight as to what might be causing this, I'd be grateful. I'm inclined to follow occam's razor here and go straight for the HDD's, the only doubt stems from the unlikelihood of four failed HDD's out of box.

I will be driving to the site tomorrow for a physical inspection & to report my assessment of this machine to the higher ups. If there's something I should physically inspect (beyond cables/connections/power supply) please let me know.

Thanks.