topic Re: failed disks on one head only in ONTAP Hardware

failed disks on one head only

greghaa69 — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:21:31 GMT

Have an HA pair. An ESH module failed causing some disks to pre-maturely fail. Swapped the module and disks and everything is fine.

Problem now is that the partner head sees a few disks as failed. The head that owns the disks sees them as healthy and they are data disks. Not spares or parity.

What can I do to get the partner to recognize the disks as healthy? Fail them prematurely and swap them? not sure what path to take.

Re: failed disks on one head only

ekashpureff — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 15:44:59 GMT

Greg -

I've never seen this before.

I could suggest two operations, but I'd be leary of proceeding on a production system without the adult supervision of NetApp support !

You're suggestion of failing the disks sounds good, but I wouldn't swap them out.

Instead I'd use the advanced priv 'disk unfail' command.

The other more risky option would be to fail over to the partner.

Again - I'd open a ticket with support rather than proceed on my own ...

I hope this response has been helpful to you.

At your service,

Eugene E. Kashpureff, Sr.
Independent NetApp Consultant http://www.linkedin.com/in/eugenekashpureff
Senior NetApp Instructor, FastLane US http://www.fastlaneus.com/
(P.S. I appreciate 'kudos' on any helpful posts.)

Re: failed disks on one head only

greghaa69 — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 16:04:09 GMT

That was the only idea I could come up with. "disk unfail -s" on the partner head and let a spare take over. Although on the owned head the disks aren't failed so not sure that will work.

Could possibly fail the disk on the head that owns the disk and let a spare take over and then swap with a good disk. I think because the module failed and was replaced it set a failed state in the partner and was never cleared when the good module came online.

This is a QA system and only serves data internally. Not a prod system.

Re: failed disks on one head only

ekashpureff — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 16:15:07 GMT

Greg -

If it's not production - play with it !

🙂

I'd try the 'disk fail' and then 'disk unfail' on the owning controller, and skip swapping in new disks...

I hope this response has been helpful to you.

At your service,