Hard drive activity indicator remains continuously lit.

Problem:

Hard drive activity indicator remains continuously lit.

Affected Models:

Details:

When there are no hard drives connected to the onboard SAS controller, loading certain versions of the Intel SAS driver (isci.ko) will cause the activity light to remain on.

Solution:

The easiest solution is to enter the BIOS and disable the onboard SAS controller:

Advanced -> SCU Configuration -> Storage Controller Unit [Disabled]

Alternatively, the driver may be blacklisted in the OS. For example under Enterprise Linux: 

#echo "blacklist isci" > /etc/modprobe.d/isci-blacklist.conf

It may be necessary to rebuild the initial ramdisk to prevent the driver from being loaded during boot.