topic 4400 Command View detected array is inoperative in Disk Enclosures

4400 Command View detected array is inoperative

J.Dan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:14:46 GMT

Hi All,

I am having some trouble setting up a new EVA4400. I am getting error:
"Command view EVA has detected this array is inoperative. Contact HP Support" and "All disk groups in the storage system are RAID1 inoperable". The disks in the shelf all show green and if I reseat a single disk I can see all the disks in all shelves recognize the change.

Can anybody point me in the right direction? The controllers get good status in the web page so I assume the problem is with a shelf, a shelf cable, or a disk.

Since nothing is on this SAN yet I am happy to reinitialize but because of errors it is not even allowing me to do that.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
J.Dan

Re: 4400 Command View detected array is inoperative

J.Dan — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:25:14 GMT

This turned out to be a problem with disks that were added to the array from another san. They already had meta data on them so when my new server booted up, even though it was uninitialized, it saw them as having data and errored. To fix I shutdown the array, pulled the alien disks, booted the array, initialized the array, and added the alien disks.

Re: 4400 Command View detected array is inoperative

Víctor Cespón — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:18:49 GMT

Do not put disks that were on another EVA that was not un-initialized first. They will contain metadata and confuse the controllers which will find two sets of metadata on the disks.
Adding them one by one once the EVA is initialized is a better idea.
In case someone finds himself on this situation and cannot remove the added disks (because the will be left with less than 8, for example), call HP, the metadata on the disks can be erased with a command from the controller serial port.

Re: 4400 Command View detected array is inoperative

hungry — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:36:24 GMT

Did this happen after a firmware update?
just a suggestion to have a look at the following advisory:
http://www11.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en&docId=emr_na-c01797849-2