topic Shelf swop in HPE Nimble Storage Solution Specialists

Shelf swop

Simonthepieman — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 10:43:39 GMT

I have two EOL CS220 arrays which are now just used as a development platform.

Array #1 has an E1-H65 shelf attached and I'd like to transfer it to Array #2. Does anyone have the intsructions on how to do this please? Adding it to Array #1 was very straight forward and expanded the storage when the Activate button was pressed on the GUI. This was many years ago.. I want Array #2 to accept the shelf and wipe the data on the shelf. As the arrays are EOL I have no Nimble support.

Re: Shelf swop

Simonthepieman — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 11:48:33 GMT

Just noticed this.

https://community.hpe.com/t5/Array-Setup-and-Networking/How-flexible-are-the-expansion-shelves/m-p/6984419#M1265

Looks like the shelf is married to Array #1 and I'd need support's help to unmarry it. But it's out of support. I assume it's a relatively straight forward process if no data is required.

Re: Shelf swop

Simonthepieman — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:05:31 GMT

Do you think if I just take out all the disks from the shelf and wipe them (delete all partitions) the shelf will effectively be seen by Array #2 as back to factory reset and all references to it being attached to Array #1 will have been lost.

Re: Shelf swop

Nick_Dyer — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 13:43:40 GMT

Hello Simon,

Indeed, Nimble expansion shelves are not able to be removed or detatched from a head shelf today - as the CASL filesystem sequentialises and stripes data across all drives in all shelves for best performance & resillience.

The only way to detatch a shelf today is to re-initialise the array controllers back to factory settings - using a factory reimage process of the system. This requires Support intervention, as you need to obtain the factory image in order to wipe the USB keys inside the controllers.

(For anyone else reading this thread - shelf evacuation will be available in a NimbleOS release in 2020 for arrays under active support contracts.)