MSA1000 / Disk Activity

[CA1138262]

Hi,

Just bought ourselves a nice MSA1000 with HA option. We've assembled all the bits into what we think are the right places, etc.

Got it in a test environment with a W2K server
with 2 HBAs and SecurePath s/w installed.
Configured a RAID-AVG physical volume and
2 logical arrays with selective presentation.

We've noticed that the disk activity leds
seem to be flashing quite a bit of the time.
The W2K server has one of the arrays mounted
as an NTFS voulme but there are no files on it.

Question : Is this expected behaviour ?

[Uwe Zessin]

Jeff,
that behaviour is absolutely normal, because the MSA1000 does delayed logical disk initialization and disk scrubbing (testing disks).

[CA1138262]

Hi Uwe,


Thanks for the reply.

We set this thing up c.a. 1 week ago
(and then got dragged off to sort other things).

The weird thing is, it's still exhibiting this behaviour, disk leds flickering away.

So it can't be array initialisation, etc.

It must be some sort of disk access/testing by the controllers, SecurePath s/w or W2K server.

Is that so ?

Many Thanks,

[Uwe Zessin]

Hello, Jeff.
Yes, that is correct. The array is testing the disks. If you pull a report with the Array Diagnostic Utility (ADU) and you look deep into the report you can even find a counter how often this has run already.

[CA1090196]

I Also have same case on MSA1K that disk activity light on all the time.

But the old one MSA1K setup under Win2k cluster env. (via SCSI port) that do not have such behavior.

The new one we just brought that equiped fiber module & update to latest frimware that HDs activity quite busy.

So it make me quite confuse why the old one MSA1K do not do such job (disk cheing/testing) ?

Cody.

[Uwe Zessin]

It sounds like you have upgraded from a MSA500 to a MSA1000. The MSA500 uses a different controller. I don't have experience with this box - it is possible that its firmware works different.

[CA1090196]

Yes you are right ! :)

Regarding "disk scrubbing(testing disks)" on
MSA1000, does it can be adjustable or not ?
I seems do not find how to ?
Meantime, such process will reduce the HD lifetime ? because it testing so quite often ??

Regards.

[Uwe Zessin]

Hello Cody,
I haven't seen any knob for it, but I don't work with the MSA very often and I usually use the CLI so I could have missed it.

High performance disk drives are designed for a high duty cycle. From looking at the lights it looks like the disk drives don't do much seeks - they rather do a spiral read.

[CA1090196]

I see !

Thanks your advises.

Regards.

[CA1193602]

I ve got the same beahvior - the disks are working the whole time. It was not an upgrade but a new MSA1000 - and i also have bad write/read performance.
The host ist installed with linux 2.6. The drivers are the ones that shipped with suse Linux 2.6 and not the original drivers because they dont support kernel 2.6