E Series Hard Drive Choice and other hiccups

linus0508 — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:12:42 GMT

So I recently picked up a used and non-tested E-Series Chassis (Class 3560 - Model 0834) with one "Drive Module I/F-6" installed. It was dirt-cheap so I thought it would be a good opportunity to get into the whole thematic of Storage Arrays.

Today I made my way up to installing the SANtricity Management Software and getting it to pick up the Chassis. Everything seems to be fine accept of a couple of errors that are probably all related to each other and most likely my error. Let me explain: at first I tried to Plug-In a Standard Sata Hard-Drive with 250GB of capacity which directly lead to the drive being bypassed. At first I thought there was some old configuration left on the controller so I searched how I could format it. The solution with SANtricity does not work for me as it spits out a "Error 101" that the operation can not be handled as no drives were detected or a drive was installed but not initialized. This kept happening regardless of the drive being installed or not. Through the CLI ( the one being accessible via Serial and pressing Break during boot up) I'm stuck at the login prompt where I can not guess the correct username/ password. The CLI Utility ( I guess its called SMI-S) isn't an option at the moment as my registration in the support section is still being processed.

So these is my Situation with the resulting questions:

- Am I limited tom using original NetApp branded drives or is there an option to use off the shelf SATA/ SAS ones?

- Are the mentioned errors all resulting of the not (properly) installed Storage Media?

- Has someone an idea what the standard login is or how I could I reset it?

Thanks so much in advance! Hope to get the Chassis working ASAP.

Re: E Series Hard Drive Choice and other hiccups

MitchBlackburn — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 12:47:58 GMT

Hi,

Yes, you are limited to using NetApp E-Series drives. You can't just use any NetApp branded drive. The drives will have FW on them specifically for E-Series. There are no options to use off the shelf drives.

Best,
Mitch

topic Re: E Series Hard Drive Choice and other hiccups in EF & E-Series, SANtricity, and Related Plug-ins

E Series Hard Drive Choice and other hiccups

Re: E Series Hard Drive Choice and other hiccups