va7100 questions

[JL Billman]

I have a VA7100 array with 12 73GB drives in in attached to two rp2470's. I am not familiar wit hte VA7100's so I am not sure if I have a problem or not. I was on site and noticed that one of the drives had a yellow light lit and the other 11 did not. I assume this is a bad thing. Unfortunately I forgot which drive the LED was lit on.

I am looing for suggestions on how I can remotely look at the array and determine if the LED means I need to replace the drive or not or need to take some other action. I will be back on site tonight if I need to physically d oanything to the drive.

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

A yellow light could mean that the drive is toast.

Use the armdsp command to look at the array status.

Use 'armdsp -i' to get information on the array. You will need the "Alias" or "Serial Number" in the next step.

Now use 'armdsp -a ' or 'armdsp -a ' to look at the array status. You will probably want to pipe the command to more.

This will tell you the status of all array components and the status of the array itself. If you need help interpreting the output, attach it as a file and we can help.

[JL Billman]

Thanks for the prompt reply!

According to armdsp all of the drives show a status of good..... Hmmm, I guess I need to probably get the drive replaced the next time I am on site just to be safe.

I was trying to figure out cvui and it showed one of the drives had 631 defects. Any idea if the number of defects reported would cause the amber LED to be lit?

[Patrick Wallek]

It's possible, but I'm not sure.

Double check and make sure that ALL 12 drives are listed in your armdsp output. I had a drive go bad on a VA7400 at one point and for some reason it disappeared from the armdsp output.

[JL Billman]

All 12 drives show up in armdsp and still show good.

[Crewescontrol]

Very late reply, but just a quick note as im sure you have fixed the problem by now.

Is the orange led lit on the disk in question? and on that same disk, is the green led flashing away to say its being accessed? The orange led on the disk is controlled by the controller and the green led on the disk is controlled by the disk.

I have had a situation in the past where 2 disks have failed. The first one to go has meant the hot spare capacity went, thus meaning it doesnt show in armdsp -d and in a warning state till the data has been rebuild onto the remaining disks.

The second one to go sent the VA into a permanent warning state as it is now in raid 5 configuration with no hot spare, ie no room for any more failures.

The first disk was replaced, went included and completed its rebuild (according to the logs - armlog and logprn) then the second replacement disk was inserted. This went to "included" within commandview (armdsp -d) but the orange led still stayed on the disk, even though the disk was being accessed (green led flashing). This stayed like this even though 2 new disks were replaced in that slot. The VA also went into a warning state because the cache battery was "end of life". Didnt want to replace the battery when VA in such a state, but no choice. When controller 1 was pulled out, the array went into "single controller" state and the orange led went off the disk!. So replaced the cache battery on controller 1 and when it finshed copying the cache back, VA went to ready state.

Never really did figure out why the controller got confused about the status of the disk, but by making controller 2 the only active controller, the orange led went out. 2nd disk replaced too quickly? firmware (was HP15), etc...

For people's info really...