disk blinking twice as fast

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

we do have an alpha server with a smart array 5300 controller. I noticed that one disk was blinking twice as fast as another. Blinking usually signifies according to the docs the soon failure. What does it mean it the led is blinking twice as fast?

Thanks for any insight,

Michael

[Jefferson Humber]

Is it the SBB style disk ?

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Jefferson,

thanks for posting. It is built into a ds25 and it is built into the internal cage, which holds six disks.

Michael

[Jefferson Humber]

Is it the Activity, Status or Fault LED ?

You can find some manuals here for the HP HDD's.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/docs/index.html#2

Can't find this condition mentioned in my DS25 owners manual ?

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Oups,

looks like I forgot to mention it explicitly. It is of course the fault led. I have downloaded the smart array 5300 docs but have found only a reference to normal blinking.

Thanks,

Michael

[Jefferson Humber]

A blinking fault LED is not good.

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/universal-hdd-guide.pdf

[Jefferson Humber]

Is it the same as the 2nd one down on the .PDF ?

If so you are right with the predictive failure alert.

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

Ah, you have found the password? ;-)

The fault LED blinks rapidly while you have selected that element in the ACU - i.e. while you are managing the SmartArray controller.

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Uwe,

actually I had to add the user I wanted in the adminstrator group to a specific group in /etc/group. Although I am not totally sure about being in the configuration menu, it would be a reasonable explanation because I worked with it during that period of time. Seeing all disks blink really freaked me out. I thought I somehow crashed the machine!
Why isn't that documented?

Thanks for all posts!

Michael

[Uwe Zessin]

The Installation and Configuration Guide says:
""
Installing and Using the Tru64 UNIX On-line Monitoring Utility

With the HP Management Agents for Tru64 UNIX you can:
* View your AlphaServer hardware configuration including all installed Smart Array 5300A controllers and attached storage devices.
* Monitor the state of the system locally or remotely.
* Locate logical and physical drives attached to Smart Array 5300A controllers by flashing the relevant drive LEDs
""

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Uwe,

I would have expected this capability described in the smart array documentation.

Michael

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Uwe,

on second thought this does not describe quite the state that the led was in. Here is also just mentioned an ordinary flashing during a locate and nothing about flashing double frequency during a disk select.

Michael