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Sanitize drives with external tools
Hi all,
I have some VNX drives to sanitize and customer requires a certified solution as Blancco. As I know the way to sanitize these drives is at LUN level to maintain the firmware but this way certificates are not generated based on drives serial number so is not enough as a proof of sanitization.
If we erase drives directly firmware is cleaned up so could we request Dell to reimage these drives with EMC firmware? I supose this is not a work we can do by ourselves.
Regards,
DELL-Sam L
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October 20th, 2022 04:00
Hello jtejada.ralco,
As long as the formatting of the drives is not a low level/manufacture format, the EMC firmware on the drives should remain. If it was me I would test this on a few drives first to ensure that the drives can be seen by an EMC system again, before doing an entire shelf at one time.
DELL-Sam L
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October 7th, 2022 09:00
Hello jtejada.ralco,
If the vnx system is under a support contract, then we can reimage the drives. If your vnx is not under a support contract, then we can’t reimage the drives.
jtejada.ralco
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October 11th, 2022 01:00
Hi Sam,
Do you refer to only vault drives or all drives?
I am in touch with Blancco support team and they say only vault drives can not be erased and there is no problem sanitizing all other non vault drives and reuse again.
I am not sure if they are correct.
Regards,
DELL-Sam L
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October 11th, 2022 07:00
Hello jtejada.ralco,
With a VNX system you don’t want to create any luns or volumes on the vault drives. They are correct in that you don’t want to sanitize the vault drives, as doing so will require you to open a support case so that we can send a new set of vault drives. Also, sending of new vault drives from support requires an active support contract. Any non-vault drives can be sanitize without affecting the OS on your VNX system.
jtejada.ralco
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October 20th, 2022 02:00
Hi Sam,
Thanks for reply. Blancco sanitization requires to boot an image into a server and connect drive shelves we want to sanitize using HBA SAS connection. That is the point that drives formatted in 520 block size are not being recognized, If I perform a conversion to 512 block size then drives are recognized and we can perform the sanitization but I am not sure if that procedure affects to dell firmware and non-vault drives can be reused again with the VNX system if I reformat them again to 520 block size. To perform block size conversion I use sg_tools. The question is if a block size conversion could affect dell firmware and make drives useless.
Regards,