PS 4100 Showing Volume size after Firmware Upgrade

Hello SJNAPL,

In most cases, it might have been a glitch in the reporting.  If VMware says that there is free space, then you have free space.  Also, since you are running VMware 6.0 you need to be running firmware version 9.16 or 10.0.1.  With running older firmware, you might have had this issue showing in the background & didn’t notice it.

You don’t want to thick provision your volumes. What you can also do is to run the reclaim space command on every volume and that will reclaim any unused space from your volume.  When you run the reclaim space command it can take some time to complete. Here is a link to the VMware KB that states how to reclaim space. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2014849  

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Hello,

 As Sam mentioned follow what the VMware OS says for free space, not the EQL GUI. 

 One thing on UNMAP.  If you are replicating volumes using EQL replication then UNMAP will not work.

 Or if you upgraded your Datastore VMFS version from v3 to v5/v6.  UNMAP isn't supported then either.

  That only is applicable if you have been running VMware since 4.x days and just keep upgrading.

  Regards,

Don

Thanks for the info,,

I will update to the latest firmware 10.0.1.

We are not replicating any volumes at this time.

As a side note, have either of you heard of any issue with a series of disk drives installed from the factory being bad?

Stan

Hello Stan,

 Re: Bad drives.  Not to my knowledge no. 

Regards,

Don

Hello Stan,

I also have not heard of any drives being bad from the factory when installed.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Ok,,

This is why I have a question..

This EqualLogic was purchased in 2013.  The group that purchased the EqualLogic  said that it had failed drive or drives right after it was set up.  They did not pursue this and eventually forgot about it and did not use the SAN.

I took it over last year and reconfigured it and replaced the bad drive so we can use it in a dev/test environment with vSphere. However, since last summer, we have had 7 of the drives fail.  All of the ones failing are from the same series based on the serial SN – 6SE56xxx

We are not sure why this is occurring or how to solve it other than suspecting the original drives.

thanks

Hello,

 Then they also likely did not keep up with array and drive firmware updates either I suspect.

  Without array diagnostics to review the history of the drives and array I can only speculate.

  I suspect it's not under contract?  You could do a one time support call for a fee and they will review it and offer any suggestions.

 Regards,

Don

Hello,

 Gathering the diags can be done via the GUI under the Tools menu or CLI.   Support can help you with that process.as well.

 Here's a video on how to do it as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_QDBvEHukI

 Depending on the activity during the last year some of the log info may have been overwritten.  The diags will show how the current drives are working which could be more beneficial to you.

 re: Cost. That I do not know. 

 Regards,

Don

Thanks Don

Yes,,they did not keep up the maintenance.

I just completed the upgrade to v10.0.1

Would the array diagnostics go back to last year for reviewing the failures?

What is the process to generate a diagnostic? 

What is the cost of a one time call?