EVA 5000 Upgrade issue #1

[mpapet]

Hi,

In a first attempt to expand a nearly full HP EVA 5000, I am attempting to use larger (146GB) disks than the 36GB in the SAN. The working conditions are equivalent to "If it's not broken, don't fix it."  So, please, no editorials about about the age and "musts" and "should-haves."

I got the following error after replacing disk 1 (left side of shelf) in the first shelf of one of the controllers.  This was the first disk replaced.

The error: "A Fibre Channel physical disk drive firmware revision has been detected by the physical disk drive firmware load process that is later than the latest known supported revision."

After being online for a couple of minutes, it appeared in the "unmappable hardware" section and I added it into the single disk group we run. The disk appears to have been accepted into the fabric and command view shows the leveling process as happening.  If it helps, the RSS Disk State is shown as mirrored.

Is the bigger disk going to be included in the fabric? 

I am working under the assumption that I will replace each 36GB disk with a 146GB one at a time, left to right in the shelf, after leveling is complete with each replacement.  Is that considered best practice?

[Steven Clementi]

First... what VCS is running on the EVA?

Second... see my reply to your other post.

[mpapet]

I believe the version number you are asking for is 4004

[Sebastian.Koehler]

The message is expected if the VCS version is not aware of the disk firmware. This is also true for some disk firmwares not known by the latest VCS 4100. Don't worry about this to much. EVA is virtual and all disks belong to one or more disk groups. If you remove a disk without ungrouping a reconstruct will start. You should do the following instead:

* ungroup the disk you want to remove (takes time)
* ungroup as many disks as you have free space
* remove ungrouped disks physically
* install new disks one at a time / wait 1 min between installations
* group all new disks added to the array in a single task (takes time)
* continue until complete

The EVA will not put the new disk into the disk group automatically, it must be grouped. A group operation is more effective, if you group more disks at a time. Update to VCS 4100 is a good thing. If you can get it, do it. Perform a online disk firmware update only if all 36GB disks are removed, since they do not support this operation.

Regards,
Sebastian