topic VA7100 Warning: metadata lacks redundancy in Disk Enclosures

VA7100 Warning: metadata lacks redundancy

Mad_1 — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 22:35:20 GMT

There was a VA7100 disk failure, after HP engineer replaced the faulty disk, there is a WARNING message appeared in the output of "armdsp -a". The message is :

WARNING: Some or all of the metadata stored on map disks lacks redundancy.

The amber light of the VA is also up.

The engineer said that the faulty disk is one of the disk to stores the "Recovery Maps" within the VA. He claimed the Recovery Maps has been already sync, but the Warning message is not cleared. He said the VA needs power recycle to clear the Warning message.

As we expect VA is a high availability storage and single disk failure should not introduce any service break. I would like to ask is it normal to power recycle if a "Recovery Maps" disk failure? And is it possible to clear the warning online without reset the VA.

Thanks

Re: VA7100 Warning: metadata lacks redundancy

Eugeny Brychkov — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 01:51:48 GMT

You'd better post this message to storage section. Please attach 'armdsp -a' and 'armlog -e' outputs zipped
Eugeny

Re: VA7100 Warning: metadata lacks redundancy

Mad_1 — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 02:02:04 GMT

Thanks Eugeny.

Attached please find the logfiles.

Re: VA7100 Warning: metadata lacks redundancy

Eugeny Brychkov — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 04:46:11 GMT

M/D2 was image disk which was failed on 28th of September 18:41 due to excessive media errors. Rebiuld have been completed within 3 hours. Drive was removed 7th of October 11:38. Replaced 11:42.
I suspect there already were some structures on the disk and that's why your VA did not write its maps onto it.
I suggest the following (have a backup before doing it - to be on the safe tack):
1. fail M/D2 'armcfg -D M/D2 -d -F va05phq'. This command should work without problems because there's enough space for rebuild;
2. VA will start rebuilding. Watch 'armrbld -p va05phq' and proceed to step 3 as soon as it will finish (estimated time: 3 hours);
3. unfail and include disk into VA disk set 'armcfg -D M/D2 -a va05phq'.
I hope it will help
Eugeny

Re: VA7100 Warning: metadata lacks redundancy

Mad_1 — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 21:24:15 GMT

Thanks a lot Eugeny.

The engineer finally suggested to replace the disk again with a new unformatted disk. He claimed that the replacing disk was formatted before. I think the reason is similar to your finding.

By the way, I am amazed that how Eugeny familiar with storage. As I am newbie to VA and SAN, I am not familiar with many commands of VA operation.

Eugeny, would you mind to share some experience of storage support?

Re: VA7100 Warning: metadata lacks redundancy

Eugeny Brychkov — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 01:09:23 GMT

Although VA operation principles are described in VA user and service book, you can find commands' description in CommandView user guide at http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual&locale=en_US&docIndexId=179111&taskId=115&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=64112
If you have questions - please ask, I will be happy to help
Eugeny