Nimble Storage failed disk unable to remove/add or to successfully Swap disk between Slot

[junjun88]

Hi there,

I'm new to Nimble. I have an old Nimble Storage CS220G & do not have support from HPE Infosight. The affected controller has Head-Shelf CS220G with two expansion shelf namely, Shelf-1 ES1-H25 ( 15 HDD x1TB, 1 SSDx160GB) ; and Shelf-2 ES1-H45 (15HDD x 2TB, 1 SSD x 300GB ). Recently, one of the disk (i.e. HDD 1TB)  in ES1-H25 failed which is located in Slot #9. I tried remove the disk in Slot #9 to test and replace the good disk in Slot #10 BUT I got below error failed to remove as shown below:

Nimble OS $ disk --remove 9 --shelf_location B.P1.1
ERROR: Failed to remove disk at slot 9, shelf B.P1.1 This shelf is either not used or inactive.

Below disk stastus after removing the disk in Slot #10 and when tried to attempt removed the disk in Slot #9 and got an error.

Nimble OS $ disk --remove 9 --shelf_location B.P1.1
Nimble OS $ disk --list --shelf_location B.P1.1 | grep FRC5
:
9 2..FRC5 HDD 1000.20 failed N/A
10 13..RC5 HDD 1000.20 removed N/A

As I was able to remove the good disk in slot #10, I tried to replace/add disk from slot #10 to slot #9 but when I tried to execute disk --add 9 with --force option I still got the same error as above.

To isolate the issue, even tried to add the disk to slot #10 from slot #9 but I got below error even with --force option:

Nimble OS $ disk --add 10 --shelf_location B.P1.1 --force
ERROR: Failed to add disk at slot 10, shelf B.P1.1 No such object.

Not sure what I've missed-out how can I successfully swap the disk between slot without having error and would also update the Disk Serial Number from its original serial number.

Hope somebody can guid me on this so we could still utilize our old Nimble storage in our dev environment to save us the cost. Tried to search in the web for Nimble shelf/disk troubleshooting/management or related issues that I've encountered but can't find any.

Any help is very much appreciated.

Thanks & regards,

Jun

[dineshkumar_s]

Hello ,

Kindly contact our Nimble Support @ 1-877-364-6253 , extension x2 for support.

and also email send an email to support@nimblestorage.com.

Thanks 

Dinesh Kumar 

[junjun88]

Hi Dinesh,

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, we don't have support anymore with our old CS220 the reason I posted and seek help/guidance here in the community that maybe somebody will be able to assist me to resolve on the issue. I would be happy if you could further assist me Dinesh (e.g. howto or steps to wipe-out the old failed disk serial # in the slot and register the new disk in the array/shelf with the new disk serial # that will update in the slot)

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Junjun

[dineshkumar_s]

Hello,

why are we removing another disk from the shelves to replace the bad one?

If the array OS is really (really) old to be running dual parity, then the spare should have already kicked in and the data will have been rebuilt.

If it’s a newer OS with triple parity then there are no spare drives in a hybrid and they shouldn’t be pulling drives out of the shelves since they’re part of a good raid set!

So in neither case should they be doing what they’re doing.

Unless I’m missing something.

If you don’t want to pay for Nimble support then try to can get third party hardware support.

Thanks 

Dinesh Kumar 

[junjun88]

Hi Dinesh,

Only tried to remove the disk from another slot just to isolate the issue if its really the drive or the slot itself has an issue. Below is the version # pulled from the array via GUI. 

Software version: 3.7.0.0-444264-opt

Thanks and regards,

Jun

[dineshkumar_s]

Hello,

I understand your concern.

Unfortunately I cannot do much as there is no support.

I am kindly requesting you to contact your ASM (Account Support Manager) for HPE.

Thanks

Dinesh Kumar