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PS6010 - Secondary Controller Module Initialising Forever
Hello,
I have inherited PS6010 storage with dual controllers - both running the following Version: V7.0.10 (R400553) of the firmware.
The storage was bought from a company selling refurbished hardware before me entering the company.
For several reasons this storage was never put in production.
The disks in the storage are Crucial: CT960M500SSD1.
Unfortunately - they are not officially supported on this storage but I have been told from the selling company that this is the reason for the specific version of the firmware they have sold it to us.
I know how all this facts sounds, but somehow I have to find a way to bring this old piece of hardware in some form of normal working condition.
I have done setup using the serial cable directly connected to the active controller - slot 0. I have managed to setup everything and finally get connected to the storage via group IP address. Everything from the java based Equallogic Group Manager is looking OK including the battery status of both of the controllers.
However, when I tried to connect to the secondary (passive module) - slot 1 with serial cable it shows that it still initialising and it seems that this message stays forever.
We tried to failover to the secondary (passive) controller and without surprise - the controller did not come up and was not responding to ping requests towards group admin interface.
Ping replies from the storage network was not received too.
What surprised me was the fact that in the certain point, the secondary controller invited me to run setup because there was no configuration at all?!
My questions are:
1. Is it normal for the secondary controller to stay in initialising state forever?
3. Why the secondary controller was not able to "read" the configuration that was already existing on the active one?
2. If I cannot find any help - how can I reach support from DELL, if this possibility exists at all?
If you need more details about the configuration, please let me know.
Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
dwilliam62
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July 8th, 2019 10:00
Hello,
Re: Disks. It is not the firmware that matters. The drives are made differently by the drive mfr specifically for PS series SANs.
Newer array models will reject drives without that process being done.
First question is are both controllers connected to the switch?
Re: 3. Neither controller has the configuration. It reads that configuration from the drives on boot up or failover. This way the controllers contain no user or config data. Both can be replaced at anytime.
Re: 2. Unlikely you will get support for an out-of-warranty array with non-Dell parts.
Re: Secondary wanted to run setup. that means it was active and could not read the configuration info on the drives. Then assumes setup has not been run and the array is un-initialized
re: 1 CM message. "Still initializing" That's actually not a sign of a problem. That passive controller cannot see the disk drives. Only the active can. So it's waiting for a failover when it will see the drives and RAID and take over.
As long as in the GUI you see both controllers, with a green status I suspect the failover problem is passive CM cables not connected.
Regards,
Don
Karatonev
2 Posts
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July 8th, 2019 11:00
Hi Don,
Both controllers are connected to the switch.
"Re: Secondary wanted to run setup. that means it was active and could not read the configuration info on the drives. Then assumes setup has not been run and the array is un-initialized"
If above is true, how is this connected to fail-over?
If the active controller is restarted, then the passive one should be able to read configuration from the drives. If this is not possible, how the passive will be able to take over at all, even if it is connected properly to the switch?
dwilliam62
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July 8th, 2019 12:00
Hello,
Do both controllers show OK in the GUI?
If so then make sure the ports the passive is connected to are configured properly.
When both controllers are in sync, and the active fails or restarts, the passive will take over and become the active. That point is has access to the drives and RAIDset will inherit the IP address and configuration. Only the port MAC addresses will change and a gratuitous ARP will be send to update switch MAC address table.
So if both controllers are in sync, and you failover and can't access it, typically indicates a network problem.
you could try failing over and moving the cables from active CM to the passive.
Regards,
Don