VNX 5300 won't reini

I would start with the physical problems first. If you see amber lights on the disks, that normally means a failed disk. The first 4 disks in the first enclosure are the OE (Operating Environment or also called the Vault drives). These contain the operating system for the array. These are arranged in pairs for redundancy. These disks should have labels on the front that indicate that these are the OE disks with a warning about removing them. The disks are labeled on the enclosure as 0-14 (or 1 to 15) counting from he left to right. Disks 0 (physical 1) and 2 (physical 3) for SPA and disks 1 (physical 2) and 4 (physical 4) for SPB. From your description it sounds like the disks for SPA are faulted.  This presents a problem as the way the disks are set up in pairs allows for one the fail and if you replace the failed disk, the remaining disk is used to rebuild the faulted disk. In this case the two disks in the pair are faulted so there is little chance that theses will rebuild correctly.

The two remaining disks should allow you to boot just SPB. In the past we've been about the power off the array, remove SPA (pull out the unit so it doesn't show up) and pull out the two failed disks. That sometimes allows you to boot up using just SPB. That should allow you to at least see what else is wrong with the array. And a not of caution, if this is unused, logging into the SPB may be a problem if you don't know the username/password to log in.

I'd recommend that you get the documents for he 5300 from the support.emc.com site - just search for Documents for VNX 5300 and start with the Hardware overview of the array - the physical description of the array, the locations of devices, etc.

As for fixing the two failed disks, that will require either getting a new set of OE disks (they are orderable as a set - all four disks - you can order them through you EMC account person) or by using support (if you have a service contract, which you probably don't have).

glen

Hello,

thank you for you answer and knowledge you've put into it.

I will try to boot SPB and see what's wrong as you said.

I will get the documentation as well and read it.

My question now is:

• OE disks are only "buyable" as 4? Can't I just put two SAME working disks (got some identical, part number as well I think) for two faulted OE disks and reimage them?

vault disk packs come with pre-installed VNX OE

I dont think you will be able to re-image VNX vault drives unless you are part of EMC manufacturing or engineering