VA 7100 failed disk initialization

[Chris Howard]

Here's what I'm trying to do:

I have a VA7100 that is full of 36Gig drives.
I have procured some 73gig drives. I'm trying
to expand my array capacity incrementally by
replacing the drives one by one. I have set Hot Spare Mode to 'none'.

So far I have tried two of the 73Gig drives. They both get an error and show up as "Failed Initialization". Thinking maybe I needed to have two in there to start it off, I installed two and both got the failed init error.
So I get the error individually and together.

The firmware of the 36Gig drives is HP06. The 73Gig drives are HP03. Otherwise, I don't see what the problem is.

Any ideas?

Chris Howard

[Mike Shilladay]

Hi Chris,

Have you tried deleteing the disks before removing them, then adding them back in.

You will need to use the armcfg command with the -D switch to delete an -a switch to add them back.

Mike.

[Chris Howard]

The first disk I replaced, I just popped out the smaller one and put in the bigger one.

The second one (slot 2 instead of slot 1) I downed the smaller disk before popping it out.


In both cases the bigger one says "init failed".

[Mike Shilladay]

Hi Chris,

Deleting the disk is different to down-ing the disk. As I understand it, down-ing the disk just deactivates it. When it comes back it expects the disk to be the same.

Deleting the disk removes all the knowledge of the disk that was previously known to the array about the disk in the slot, therefore when you 'add' a 73GB the array will be forced to read the disk and therefore update the information held.

Mike.

[Chris Howard]

down vs. delete ?

On my system armcfg -D flag is used to specify the device, -d means down and -a means add.

I don't see any option for 'delete'.

[Mike Shilladay]

Sorry Chris,

My apologies, my notes on this are a little old. I have checked the manual and there is not an option to delete, only add - weird.

That being the case the only option I can suggest is that you use the -R option with the down command, which it sounds as though you have already done. The next step given the lack of information in the manual would be to back up the data, then pull the 36GB drives and insert the 73GB and format the array, recreate the LUN's and reload the data - but this seems to be a long way round the problem.

Mike.

[Mike Shilladay]

Chris,

Are your 73GB drives 15K RPM ? If so they are not supported in the VA7100, this may explain your problem.

Mike.

[Chris Howard]

Mike, can you point me to some documentation on that? I may have to send them back.

[Mike Shilladay]

Hi Chris,

The manual that states the case is this one

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00311965/c00311965.pdf

Bottom of page 26, tells you the drives you can use.

The document does say that mixed drive capacities are allowed and that you need to insert them one at a time.

Page 98 for exchanging disks and on the next page it tells you the expected time for formatting.

Page 132 gives the procedure for changing.

Hope this helps you out and once again sorry for my initial error in trying to answer your question. I think I was too keen to be the first to answer.

Mike.