[Isilon Simulator] Failed to connect to isi_job_d daemon: Connection refused

Hey all !

In our Dev envirionment we are running Isilon Simulator. It is running OneFS 8.2.0, but some of the virtual nodes are "older" - and droping of dozens different errors, like jobs failing, inconsistent filesystem, etc. So I've decided to rebuild our virtual Isilon environment.

Nodes 1 to 7 are "old, bugged" ones.

1. vNode-1 SmartFailed, so I've shut it down (for some reason it was still running).
2. vNode-2 - I've smartfailed on my own, turned off.
3. vNode-3 to vNode-7 running with "A" flag (Attention) due to many errors occuring.
4. vNode-8 is in OK status (this is new one, built and joined the cluster 2 days ago.

Unfortunately NONE of the data was migrated to new node (Used: 600k from 46,5G).
I tought of running "FlexProtect" job to repair the existing vNodes, but the job fails with "Connection refused".

Ok, so here comes my questions:

1. Do you have any ideas how can I fix broken nodes?
2. It might be not worth effort to fix them, so I've also considered replacing broken nodes with new ones, but as per vNode-8 - none of the data is being migrated to the new node. Existing nodes are ~80% full. vNode-8 is less than 1% full. Is there any way to "force" data balance/data migration ? 
3. SmartFailing for some reason does not migrate data from the nodes being failed, since the node turns off after few seconds of running the SmartFail (too fast to migrate off 30+ GB of data...).

Any other suggestion how can I remediate the environment would be much appreciated.
There is some Hadoop-thingy I need to implement in PROD environment next week, but need to check on dev first if the solution even works...

Thanks all and regards,

Ted