VA7400 - Data Unavailable

[Stuart Urquhart]

Just curious, assuming the problem did lie with a controller, were HP ever able to explain why you ended up with a locked array and rebuild failed?

We now have two incidents on two VA's (both running HP18) where a marginal error (one on an LCC and one apparantly on a disk) have led to array lockups. And one totally unexplained lock up.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Stuart,
1. as a part of system/SAN administration admin should review VA logs regularly to see if there's anything wrong or suspicious. If there is - call HP;
2. If VA locked up for some reason - DO NOT do anything by yourself. Do not try to reboot hosts, power off VA (with its front power switch or cutting power to it). Usually these lockups can be resolved by resetting (reseating, or removing) one of VA controllers. Log should show which controller.
Usually 'big problems' arise from 'little suspicious events' thus revieweing logs ('armdsp -a' and 'armlog -e') and proactively logging HP call in time is the best practice
Eugeny

[Stuart Urquhart]

Eugeny,

Thanks for the reply. We have followed through all our VA problems with HP but have been very disappointed with the results. It took them two weeks to isolate the LCC problem during which time we suffered a considerable amount of downtime and eventually ended up being lumbered with a 36hr restore. I was really just curious if Brian had received any satisfactory response from HP.

I think I may start a "VA Problems" thread.

Cheers,

Stuart

[Gregg H]

Hi Stuart

We are going to try and get the money to trade in our 13 month old VA7400 on a more reliable SAN. We have had it with HP support and the unreliable 7400. :(

We are also going to trade in all of our Prolient servers and change laptops too. The old compaq understood support was a key component of quality.

HP is now on my do not buy list with purchasing.

Gregg

[Stuart Urquhart]

Greg,

We've now had enough as well and are replacing the VAs with EMC DMX. Interestingly HP weren't offering much of a trade in on the VAs.

Cheers,

Stuatr