Exercise Disk Array not recommended??

[kenny chia]

Hi
I heard that it is not recommend to do an exercise on a HP server disk array. Any advise on this?

Thanks

[Michael Tully]

If you are receiving EMS related error messages or other SCSI related messages, then maybe you should. If you don't have any problems then there is no need.

What do you deem as 'exercise'?

doing a:

# dd if=/dev/rdsk/cxtydx of=/dev/null bs=1024k

will exercise the disk in a read input and no output. This will cause a small performance overhead on the disk for the duration of the test (and SCSI controller if your using SCSI) but will not damage your system.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

I guess you mean exercise option in the STM?
No. You know usually disk arrays are intelligent devices, and they have their own tools to run and logs to check. Exercise is useless in most of the cases. The commands should be used to check disk array's connectivity are ioscan (if it's seen and claimed) and dd (to check readability writeability)
Eugeny

[Jon Mattatall]

Are you referring to the "Backend Exerciser" available in Grid Manager Field Engineer mode on things like Nike 10's and 20's?

I'm not sure of the particulars, but I have been told that the use of this option can SEVERELY damage the array. The option dates from when the product was owned by a company called Data General (or so I'm told).