ONTAP Discussions

Mystery Flash Cache after 9.2 Upgrade with FAS2520

Matt99
8,838 Views

So, I have a customer with a FAS2520.  Been running in production for a few years now on ontap 9.0.

 

We did an upgrade today to ontap 9.2.

 

While poking around I noticed the Flash Cache screen said the controllers had 768GB of flashcache disabled.  So I went ahead and hit the enable button in the GUI for both controllers.

 

Now, I'm pretty certain the FAS2500 series did not have flash cache as an option and a sysconfig from both nodes doesn't show anything.

 

So where did this phantom flash cache come from?  The really weird thing the flash cache screen will even show an occasional hit.

 

Does 9.2 show the NVMEM or something weird as flash cache?

10 REPLIES 10

Jeff_Yao
8,577 Views

looks like a bug.

WillFulmer
8,340 Views

Seeing same behavior here on systems without FlashCache, including A200 AFA All Flash.

MattWhite
8,241 Views

I'm seeing the same thing with AFF A200. After upgrading to 9.2P1 it shows a flash cache is installed and it let me enable it.

wertk
7,994 Views

I saw the same with an A200 on 9.3RC1.  I dug through documentation and bugs but didn't find anything useful.  

FreddieHFS
7,650 Views

Seeing this on FAS8020s as well. Interesting...

MikeSchaus
7,462 Views

The same with a aff200 and 9.3. Support said it should be a bug and maybe fixed in 9.4 
BUG 1131025

AlexDawson
7,423 Views

At this point the fix is pushed back further than 9.4 - It's a low priority issue, since there isn't any chance of data corruption or system instability, and fixing it is a surprisingly involved task.

 

OCSM trusts the zAPI to describe what capabilities the controller has and draws the UI on that basis, and the zAPI trusts the flashcache management module, and flashcache trusts the controller to not describe anything it doesn't have, but the controllers can ship with different configs of flashcache (zero on AFF vs FAS with 1 or 2 cards depending on config and any hardware errors), so they don't validate that component at boot.

 

If it is a significant concern, I would encourage you to log a case and ask that it be recorded against BURT 1131025 and 1122144.

TMADOCTHOMAS
6,461 Views

Really thankful for this thread, as I just upgraded to 9.3P10 (from 9.2P4) and noticed the Flash Cache entry on my AFF system. Although low priority, I would note that these unusal anomolies do waste some time for administrators. I spent some time researching online and this message board post was the only content I found that answered the question.

AlexDawson
6,428 Views

Hi @TMADOCTHOMAS  - Thanks for your feedback!

 

Based on my reading of the bug notes, it should be fixed in ONTAP 9.5P1 (released last week)

TMADOCTHOMAS
5,702 Views

Thank you @AlexDawson !

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