NX4 Celerra - Deleted Pools

In general - once a LUN is used by the Celerra - dont touch it.

only delete it, if you are very very sure its no longer used by anything on the Celerra

do not change its size

Hi,

I'm sure its documented somewhere. I know that for a while now we are automatically renaming these LUNs to make it clearer that they are used by the Celerra but I dont know if NaviExpress with its simplified GUI acutally shows the LUN and storagegroup names.

I would suggest to escalate through your sales guy.

If you can provide a dialin and insert the correct CD a support guy should be able to re-install it remotely

maybe if you suggest that it gets you someone sooner

Rainer

Hi,

Thank you so much for your reply...I have the software disc that came with the celerra, as well as the NAS iso. But of course I have no procedure to re-install it. Is this documented somewhere that the first disk pool and LUNs are not to be touched?

Hopefully we can actually get someone from EMC soon on site, it is taking a long time that's why I was looking for other means of doing it.

Svetlana

Hi,

I understand, its just that I thought it was suspicious, we ordered 12 disks, and cannot use 5 out of 12. Made no sense to me at that time and still doesnt

We cannot provide remote access to the EMC support because our network is in the process of being set up. I just wish it wouldnt take so long.

As fo the disk pools, if i was me I would put a warning next to the configured LUNs not to delete them. I was not even given a warning when I deleted them or recreated.

Another question...what is the reason why they do not allow customers to do installations? Will they not support it after the system is re-installed by let's say me?

Thank you once again Raider...

Svetlana

There is a number of reasons that we currently don't support  customer-installable code.  Most of it has to do with the fact that with  today's NAS code and today's hardware, there are so many variables to  consider that allowing customer installs without a proper EMC change  control process could end in some fairly disasterous results.

We  have two platforms that are currently customer-installable: the NS20  and the NX4.  Making installer code that is robust enough for customer  installation is on the roadmap, but I don't know exactly when it will be  ready.

William,

So basically I cannot delete the RAID group or the LANs already configure. I do not see the LUN you are refferring to, below is a snap shot of the configuration we had before we deleted the LUNs.

Hi William,

This is good to know...I understand that allowing customers installing the software could cause inconsistency. But I think even if EMC provides the software (which they did actually) then still EMC doesnt want to guide the installation even on the phone. So I guess its fully from preventing instability which will later be hard to support.

Thank you...

Svetlana

yes, the modem attaches to the control station serial port and thats all that is needed for the code install

no fancy GUI there :-)

since every Celerra ships with a modem our support people are very much used to work through the CLI

if the support guy is clever he uses screen - then he can re-attach if the gets bumped of the modem line during the install

yes - the ones that say (NAS/OS) contain the Celerra DART OS -  you dont want to delete them or you are in for a re-install

d7/d8 are data LUNs - they can be deleted *if* you first delete all devices on the Celerra that use them

preferrably using Celerra commands like nas_disk -unbind since that has a chance to check whether the LUN is still in use

the Clariion GUI/CLI has no way to determine if its still in use (as with other hosts)

storage provisioning for customer use has gotten a lot better with the storage provisioning wizard

I have to admit that for de-provisioning we arent there yet - its only CLI and you need to know what you are doing

when in doubt ask support

OK, let me see if I can answer *all* of your questions this time... sorry...

We cannot provide remote access to the EMC support because our network is in the process of being set up. I just wish it wouldnt take so long

If you have Internet access from a workstation that can also see the Celerra, we can use WebEx to assist you.  While some forms of Internet access are a little slow (like a cellular modem), if you can get there, we can help.

As fo the disk pools, if i was me I would put a warning next to the configured LUNs not to delete them. I was not even given a warning when I deleted them or recreated

I absolutely understand your concern.  We are working closely with our Clariion engineers to initially rename those LUNs such that it will make it much more obvious that you should not delete the RAID group.  Following that, we will be producing Clariion code which will actually protect those LUNs and RAID groups from being deleted.  It is currently a matter of interoperability and uniformity across all backend types, and we are currently working on overcoming those obstacles.

William Stein wrote: We  have two platforms that are currently customer-installable: the NS20  and the NX4.  Making installer code that is robust enough for customer  installation is on the roadmap, but I don't know exactly when it will be  ready.

customer installable there doesnt mean that the customer can re-install the DART OS - it means the customer can do the initial configuration using CSA without EMC or partner help

Thank you William,

I understand all of this takes time. I am an engineer myself working on a system and I know very well that no system is perfect. It's great if this concern is already being adressed and implemented.

As for remote support, this is good to know that might be an option if we cannnot have someone from the EMC engineers to come on site which is what we are hoping for.

Svetlana

Also, you can use the free space on the first five drives for filesystems if you choose.  You cannot, however, remove the RAID group because it contains the operating system which runs the Data Movers.  In this way, the Data Movers' code is protected the same way and to the same level as your data.

However, the Data Mover's code does not take the entire space on those drives, so the remaining space can be used.  It would appear in your pool list as "clar_r5_performance".