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jebersole

9 Posts

2118

August 29th, 2017 09:00

MD3220 convert to MD3220i

Hi all,

I will be inheriting a direct attach SAS MD3220 from a sister site, and plan to purchase a pair of 0770D8 storage processors from an auction site to convert it to iSCSI.  

Is there anything I'm not thinking of that will keep this from working? What about the Feature Pack? It will need changed to "1Gb iSCSI - MD3200i" but don't know if this will come over with the "used" SPs or if this is something I can get off the Dell resource CD and install without a license key.

Thoughts?

Thanks, Jason

DELL-Sam L

Moderator

 • 

6.9K Posts

August 29th, 2017 13:00

Hello Jason,

First off if you change the controller and your MD3220 is still under warranty then you will void your warranty. Also, if you are wanting to do this it is best that you backup all your data before you do so.

Now in doing this there are things that can come up that may make this not go smoothly. One thing is that when you change controller, there are some cases that controllers can go into a lockdown state. When a controller is in a lockdown state that can only be cleared via a Storage Analyst, and requires an active support contract. In addition, The Dac Stor that holds all your virtual disk configuration is stored on the controllers and the drives. If the DAC Stor is not copied over correctly then you can get a database error, and that will also lockdown your controller to protect all your data.

What you will want to do to have the best possible success is the following:

  1. Backup all data on another system.
  2. Remove all host access.
  3. Remove all virtual disks.
  4. Remove all disk groups.
  5. Reinitialize your MD3220 with your ISCSI controllers in your MD3220.
  6. Reconfigure your MD3220 with virtual disk, disk groups, & host access.
  7. Restore data to your MD3220.

I can’t guarantee that you will not have any issue when doing it the way that I have laid out. There are still things that can go wrong, & since you are doing a unsupported configuration change there will be limited assistance that can be provided via support.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

jebersole

9 Posts

August 31st, 2017 06:00

Hi Sam,

Thank you for the reply. I will be able to completely clear the configuration and start over. I assume doing this BEFORE I change controllers is best. Unfortunately, if I do obtain iSCSI controllers USED, I assume there is still some risk of LOCKDOWN if their configs aren't cleared.

So, the question is, is there any other advice you can give me to prevent LOCKDOWN, as this sounds like it could be a show stopper.

Thanks, Jason

DELL-Sam L

Moderator

 • 

6.9K Posts

September 1st, 2017 12:00

Hello Jason,

What you want to do is to make sure that you offline the controller before you remove it. When u insert the replacement controller, give it about 10 minutes before you bring it online. That way it can copy the configuration over & should prevent the controller from going into lockdown state.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

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