HPE EVA Storage
1748126 Members
3699 Online
108758 Solutions
New Discussion юеВ

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

 
BIJI JOHN
Advisor

EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

hello,
we have problem with one EVA 3000 2c2d, the problem is both the cache battery on two controller is showing Amber light,

1) we have lost all the LUN connection with the server

2) why this could have happened because all two batteries in both controller failed, can i restart the EVA

10 REPLIES 10
IBaltay
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

Hi,
the docs are here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual&docIndexId=3124&locale=en_US&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=315127

Notes:
a) when an amber LED is on both battery assemblies, you must replace the corresponding cache batteries
b) in this situation there is no disk presentation

Replacement notes:
never remove the batteries from the powerdown controller (only when its powered on)
both batteries must be removed from the enclosure before installing the replacement ones. Otherwise the failure can be propagated to the newly added battery
furthemore the both batteries removal resets the battery system status
the pain is one part of the reality
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

No, a restart of the EVA will not help. At least one controller must have properly functioning cache batteries or access to the data is prevented.

I've been told that, unfortunately, there is no way to tell the system: "hey, I know that the cache batteries are bad, but I really, really, do need access - please give me access to my data. I am willing to take the risk of operating with non-working cache batteries which can result in data loss, please, please"
:-(
.
Rob Leadbeater
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

Hi,

Occasionally the VCS firmware and the firmware on the batteries gets things wrong, and the bad state on one battery gets copied to the other battery...

Did you by any chance try swapping batteries around with the controllers shut down ? That could have made things worse.

Unfortunately the only way out of this situation is to get hold of 4 new batteries. To make things worse, these batteries are now getting quite difficult to get hold of. Part number is 235870-001.

A word of warning, make sure that you follow the instructions (usually included with the batteries) when replacing them, or you could end up with the failed state being copied onto the new batteries.

Cheers,

Rob
BIJI JOHN
Advisor

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

hello Rob,
we didnot swap the batteries between controller, yesterday we saw that there is amber light on 4 batteries.

i am afraid what could have made all four barrties fail at a time. there was no power disturbance aslo.
Rob Leadbeater
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

Hi,

I'd have thought it unusual for all four batteries to fail at the same time... Is it possible that it may have been running in a degraded state for a while, before the second batteries failed ?

What troubleshooting steps have you done so far ?

Do you have a support contract ?

If not, the first thing I would try would be to do a complete power cycle. That *might* clear things up.

Another thing you could try is to boot up the controllers with just one battery in each.

Cheers,

Rob
BIJI JOHN
Advisor

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

hello Rob,
i didn't restart because i am afraid if the data will corrupt, what i have done is i have ordered for four batteries, awaiting for the deliverly of that

will it harm or is it recomemended to restart the eva now in this state


IBaltay
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

only to repeat the replacement rules:
a) both failed batteries should be removed from the enclosure not to allow the failed battery propagation to the new battery
b) the amber LED will go off 2 minutes after both new batteries placement into the controller (LED off means that they work fine)
c) the batteries will be fully charged in 30 hours
d) till then the batteries will be at the low state and all the writes will go directly to the diskss via the writethrough cache policy,
(which could drammaticaly affect the host IO performance)
the pain is one part of the reality
IBaltay
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

reply to your question - in my opinion, if all batteries are failed, the disk group is inaccessible and the restart does not help so its better to wait without the restart of the controllers to the new batteries and then while the controllers powered on do the replacement
the pain is one part of the reality
Rob Leadbeater
Honored Contributor

Re: EVA 3000 CACHE BATTERY PROBLEM

Hi,

There should be no risk to data by restarting the controllers with failed batteries.

Cheers,

Rob