hw_assist test fails 'timeout'

victorcharlesedwards — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:44:29 GMT

We recently had an issue where our 'hw_assist' IPs were on a network that experienced some downtime, and (possibly) as a result caused our filers to panic and then reboot.

We're still investigating the coredump, but in the meantime we want to connect our filers to directly each other (filerA and filerB) on an unused onboard port (e0a, since e0M isn't in use) and used that for the 'cf.hw_assist.cf.hw_assist.partner.address' IP.

I've already configured e0a on filerA as: 172.16.3.111/24 and e0a on filerB as: 172.16.3.113/24. Here is how cf.hw_assist is configured on both systems:

filerA

filerA> ifconfig e0a

e0a: flags=0x6f48867<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,TCPCKSUM,NOWINS> mtu 1500

inet 172.16.3.111 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.3.255

ether 00:a0:98:0d:eb:30 (auto-1000t-fd-up) flowcontrol full

filerA> ping 172.16.3.111

172.16.3.111 is alive

filerA> options cf.hw_assist

cf.hw_assist.enable on

cf.hw_assist.partner.address 172.16.3.113

cf.hw_assist.partner.port 4444

filerA> cf hw_assist status

Local Node(filerA) Status:

Active: filerA monitoring alerts from partner(filerB)

port 4444 IP address 172.16.3.111

Missed keep alive alert from partner(filerB).

Last keep alive alert received on

Tue Oct 4 16:57:20 PDT 2011

Partner Node(filerB) Status:

Active: filerB monitoring alerts from partner(filerA)

port 4444 IP address 172.16.3.113

filerA> cf hw_assist test

cf hw_assist Error: No response from partner(filerB), timed out.

filerA> rlm status

Remote LAN Module Status: Online

Part Number: 110-00057

Revision: F0

Serial Number: 48XXXX

Firmware Version: 3.0

Mgmt MAC Address: 00:A0:98:10:0C:2B

Ethernet Link: up

Using DHCP: no

IPv4 configuration:

IP Address: 10.100.1.111

Netmask: 255.255.255.0

Gateway: 10.100.1.2

filerB

filerB> ifconfig e0a

e0a: flags=0x6f48867<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,TCPCKSUM,NOWINS> mtu 1500

inet 172.16.3.113 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.3.255

ether 00:a0:98:10:2d:d0 (auto-1000t-fd-up) flowcontrol full

filerB> ping 172.16.3.113

172.16.3.113 is alive

filerB> options cf.hw_assist

cf.hw_assist.enable on

cf.hw_assist.partner.address 172.16.3.111

cf.hw_assist.partner.port 4444

filerB> cf hw_assist status

Local Node(filerB) Status:

Active: filerB monitoring alerts from partner(filerA)

port 4444 IP address 172.16.3.113

Missed keep alive alert from partner(filerA).

Last keep alive alert received on

Tue Oct 4 18:09:02 PDT 2011

Partner Node(filerA) Status:

Active: filerA monitoring alerts from partner(filerB)

port 4444 IP address 172.16.3.111

filerB> cf hw_assist test

cf hw_assist Error: No response from partner(filerA), timed out.

filerB> rlm status

Remote LAN Module Status: Online

Part Number: 110-00057

Revision: F0

Serial Number: 48XXXX

Firmware Version: 3.0

Mgmt MAC Address: 00:A0:98:0F:8C:15

Ethernet Link: up

Using DHCP: no

IPv4 configuration:

IP Address: 10.100.1.113

Netmask: 255.255.255.0

Gateway: 10.100.1.2

Cluster is currently enabled and up and RLM is configured. Any ideas as to why the 'cf hw_assist test' fails? I've set the e0a interface to be trusted. We're running DOT 8.0.1 7-mode.

Re: hw_assist test fails 'timeout'

aborzenkov — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 02:49:41 GMT

Hw_assist requires connectivity between filer head on one side and partner RLM on another side. So direct connection between two onboard ports is not going to work for obvious reasons. You would need to use small switch to connect two RLM and two dedicated ports together.

Re: hw_assist test fails 'timeout'

victorcharlesedwards — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 03:45:42 GMT

Thanks, sounds like the proper way to move forward is:

- rewire / reconfigure e0a (on both filers) to unique 10.100.1.0/24 address and VLAN1 (same as RLMs)

- update cf.hw_assist.partner.address

- run 'cf.hw_assist test' again

I'll give this a shot and report back.

Re: hw_assist test fails 'timeout'

RichardTodd — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 10:12:11 GMT

I just thought I would add to this post to save people some time resolving hw_assist timeout issues with a Service Processor (SP):

Firstly check SP speed / duplex, type 'sp status' and check SP has negotiated 100Mb / Full, if not reconfigure SP network switch ports to auto / auto i.e. speed / duplex.

Once this has been completed type 'sp status' to confirm 100Mb / full duplex, if the output still shows 100Mb / half duplex, type sp reboot and use sp status to confirm reboot has completed and speed / duplex is set correctly.

Another reason for getting time out messages is if the SP has not been configured properly. This may be observed by a SP prompt without hostname i.e. 'SP>'. The SP prompt should be 'SP hostname>'

To fix this issue use the following commands:

sp status
options sp.setup off
sp setup (using info from sp status)
cf hw_assist test
cf hw_assist status

I hope this helps.

topic Re: hw_assist test fails 'timeout' in ONTAP Discussions

hw_assist test fails 'timeout'

filerA

filerB

Re: hw_assist test fails 'timeout'

Re: hw_assist test fails 'timeout'

Re: hw_assist test fails 'timeout'