MSA2000/P2000 G3 Compact Flash card format?

[PDP-Fan]

I've got a MSA2000/P2000 G3 controller from a customer which had a funny problem. Every time he wanted to create a vdisk on that controller he got an error. Creating the same vdisk on the other controller worked fine. No error messages anywhere....

I found that the problem was the CF card of that controller. After replacing it with an original 512MB card from another MSA2000 controller, the problem was gone.

Now my question: What are the requirements for these CF cards? Any special format? Does size matter..? Would a 1GB card wirk too?

I'm asking because I could not find any fault on the removed card... except it was a 1GB card.

Chris

[AnkitM]

You should never replace a Compact Flash card from another controller or try swapping it with each other (Make a note for future reference) . Every CompactFlash card has a signature to a controller. There may be a reason why you do not see a CompactFlash Card as customer replaceable unit and any errors on related to CompactFlash Card gets a controller replaced! (at least for now, HP Engineering is working on a new Firmware release,so hopes are up with many issues including MC restarting)

[PDP-Fan]

Well.... but our customer bought a used controller and the CF card was missing. So he installed a 1GB card and got the problems I described.

So my option would be to scrap the controller or try to use a CF card from another controller...

Until now, it works without problems. But I will keep your answer in mind...

[Robert_Jewell]

>> You should never replace a Compact Flash card from another controller

But isnt this what you do when you are replacing a faulty controller from an array that is in a single controller configuration?

My understanding is that the flash card contains cache data.  If the controller is shutdown properly and the cache is flushed to disk then there is no reason to move it.  However, if the controller is faulted the flash card may contain cache data and you would want to move it over to the new controller to retain that data.

-Bob

[PDP-Fan]

After playing a bit with controllers and CF cards, I assume the following...

You CAN exchange the CF cards. They are only used to store cache data in case of an unsuccessful shutdown or failure of a controller or power supply.
However, it is important to have the correct type of CF card for the MSA controller.

We have here a MSA2000 G3 controller (Model: AW592A) which had a defective CF card. We found one that's working as a replacement. (card installed and cache enabled) Then I bought a couple of new ones (4GB and 8GB) but none of these is working. The flash card is "installed" but write cache remains disabled. (CLI: SHOW CACHE)
We even cloned a known good card bitwise to a new card... no success.

My conlusion is this: There are many different hardware revisions of CF cards (version 1.0 up to 6.0) and only the correct revision will work.

So... if anybody has an information about which CF card is working with which controller, that would help a lot.

[PDP-Fan]

Update:

The MSA2000 controllers have a stored list of qualified CF cards. This list can be viewed in the diagnostic menu of the storage controller (SERVICE connector, hold down spacebar at startup). It seems that the G3 controllers are especially picky about the cards. On a G4 I found "non HP" cards that work.

Qualified CF card list includes: Manufacturer, Partnumber etc. If the new card does not match, it will not be accepted.

The CF cards are only a non volatile backup for the cache data in case of power loss. They can be swapped from one controller to another without problems. In fact they are there to swap because if your controller fails, the replaced controller should be able to write the data to the disks.

If you mess it up, the only problem is some lost data. If your MSA is in "workshop mode" anyway... no worries :-)