topic Re: disk blinking twice as fast in Disk

disk blinking twice as fast

Michael Schulte zur Sur — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 06:19:08 GMT

Hi,

we do have an alpha server with a smart array 5300 controller. I noticed that one disk was blinking twice as fast as another. Blinking usually signifies according to the docs the soon failure. What does it mean it the led is blinking twice as fast?

Thanks for any insight,

Michael

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Jefferson Humber — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 06:56:13 GMT

Is it the SBB style disk ?

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Michael Schulte zur Sur — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:37:51 GMT

Jefferson,

thanks for posting. It is built into a ds25 and it is built into the internal cage, which holds six disks.

Michael

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Jefferson Humber — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:01:50 GMT

Is it the Activity, Status or Fault LED ?

You can find some manuals here for the HP HDD's.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/docs/index.html#2

Can't find this condition mentioned in my DS25 owners manual ?

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Michael Schulte zur Sur — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:24:40 GMT

Oups,

looks like I forgot to mention it explicitly. It is of course the fault led. I have downloaded the smart array 5300 docs but have found only a reference to normal blinking.

Thanks,

Michael

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Jefferson Humber — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:38:36 GMT

A blinking fault LED is not good.

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/universal-hdd-guide.pdf

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Jefferson Humber — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:40:57 GMT

Is it the same as the 2nd one down on the .PDF ?

If so you are right with the predictive failure alert.

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Uwe Zessin — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:44:11 GMT

Ah, you have found the password? ;-)

The fault LED blinks rapidly while you have selected that element in the ACU - i.e. while you are managing the SmartArray controller.

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Michael Schulte zur Sur — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 09:17:27 GMT

Uwe,

actually I had to add the user I wanted in the adminstrator group to a specific group in /etc/group. Although I am not totally sure about being in the configuration menu, it would be a reasonable explanation because I worked with it during that period of time. Seeing all disks blink really freaked me out. I thought I somehow crashed the machine!
Why isn't that documented?

Thanks for all posts!

Michael

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Uwe Zessin — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:46:53 GMT

The Installation and Configuration Guide says:
""
Installing and Using the Tru64 UNIX On-line Monitoring Utility

With the HP Management Agents for Tru64 UNIX you can:
* View your AlphaServer hardware configuration including all installed Smart Array 5300A controllers and attached storage devices.
* Monitor the state of the system locally or remotely.
* Locate logical and physical drives attached to Smart Array 5300A controllers by flashing the relevant drive LEDs
""

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Michael Schulte zur Sur — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 11:01:43 GMT

Uwe,

I would have expected this capability described in the smart array documentation.

Michael

Re: disk blinking twice as fast

Michael Schulte zur Sur — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 11:10:41 GMT

Uwe,

on second thought this does not describe quite the state that the led was in. Here is also just mentioned an ordinary flashing during a locate and nothing about flashing double frequency during a disk select.

Michael