FAS3050 - "spare" and "parner" disks

[#1]

Good afternoon,

I have FAS3050 connected to 3 shelves by 0a channel and to another 3 shelves by 0c channel. I did not use dualpath configuration, there is only one path to each triad of shelves.

After clear installation (4a option in advanced boot menu) I have 3 disks on 0c path allocated for system, that is correct. The rest of disks on 0c channel are marked as SPARE, but all disks on 0a channel are marked as PARTNER. What does it mean, why it happened and how can I make all disks on 0a to be SPARE ?

Thanks in advance for your responses !

Michal

[#2]

Partner disks are those which are owned by the second (partner) controller.

See the Active/Active Cconfiguration Guide and Storage Management Guide in your Data ONTAP documentation.

Is it a single controller ? Were these disk shelves used in a previous configuration ?

If it is truly a single controller then you'll need to re-assign the disks.

You can use the disk reassign command to change the disk ownership.

disk reassign [-o <old_name> | -s <old_sysid>] [-n <new_name>] -d <new_sysid>
Used to reassign disks. This command can only be used in maintenance mode after a nvram card swap. Available only on systems with software-based disk ownership.

At your service,

Eugene Kashpureff

Message was edited by: Eugene Kashpureff

[#3]

Previously the system was used in Active/Active configuration, there was 2 controllers in metrocluster with another 2 controllers.

Now I use only one single FAS3050 with NO connection to any other FAS, only 6 shelves, 3shelves are on 0a and 3 shelves on 0c channel.

I set environment variables to default (thus partner-sysid variable has been deleted) and reinstall OnTap (4a option in advanced boot menu),

but system marked all disks as Partner on channel 0a after installation. The system should not detect any Active/Active configuration,

in my opinion.

I installed the same system a few months ago and there was not such problems, all disks were marked as SPARE after installation

and were hardware owned, thus I am suprised now.

[#4]

You'll have to do the reassign then.

You can go into the 'secret' 22/7 boot menu unassign them all in one fell swoop.

You may want to contact support before using maint mode.

At your service,

Eugene Kashpureff

[#5]

Hi Eugene, I booted FAS to maintenance mode, upgrade disk ownership to software, then removed ownership on all disk on 0a channel by:

disk remove_ownership 0a.*

and then assign them back

disk assign 0a.*

Now I have all disks in spare pool, no disk is marked as "Partner". I have successfully connect second path, so I have all shelves in dualpath configuration:

>storage show disk –p

PRIMARY PORT  SECONDARY PORT SHELF BAY

------- ----  --------- ---- ---------

0a.16    B    0c.16      A     1    0

0a.17    B    0c.17      A     1    1

0a.18    B    0c.18      A     1    2

0a.19    B    0c.19      A     1    3

0a.20    B    0c.20      A     1    4

0c.21    A    0a.21      B     1    5

0c.22    A    0a.22      B     1    6

0a.23    B    0c.23      A     1    7

0c.24    A    0a.24      B     1    8

0c.25    A    0a.25      B     1    9

0a.26    B    0c.26      A     1   10

0c.27    A    0a.27      B     1   11

0a.28    B    0c.28      A     1   12

0c.29    A    0a.29      B     1   13

Everything seems to be fine now, but I have feeling that filer is still looking for any partner. I have upgraded OnTap from version 7.2 to version 7.3.3 and during update it writes, something like "No partner responded, shelf update failed". Now I have:

> version
NetApp Release 7.3.3: Thu Mar 11 22:43:52 PST 2010

but following warning message continuously shows:

[disk.fw.downrevWarning:warning]: 42 disks have downrev firmware that you need to update.

Maybe I forgot to mention important thing. I have NVRAM5 card connected in PCI slot 3, it is for Active/Active configuration. For single configuration, it should be in PCI slot 1.

But I have exactly the same filer FAS3050 with exactly same cards and configuration and when I installed it a few months ago, there was no such problems which I have now.

Should I place NVRAM 5 card into PCI slot 1 ? How can I "update" firmware for 42 disks ?

Thanks,

Michal

[#6]

Michal -

See the 'disk_fw_update < disk_list >' command to update disk firmware.

This usualy done automagicly while doing an upgrade. Current disk firmware

should already be loaded on with the software release.

There were some issues doing the update with 7.2 > 7.3 on SATA drives,

see the release notes.

As for the cluster messages - not a clue !

: )

At your service,

Eugene Kashpureff

[#7]

Hi Eugene,

I moved NVRAM5 module from slot 3 to slot 1 and start upgrade again, now everything seems ok and firmware is just updated on all disks. Also all messages about "Partners" are over.

Thanks a lot !

Michal