VNX replace firt 4 disk and reimage.

Answer #1:   NO you will not find a Utility Partition.

Answer #2:  Your Utility Partition (UP) is mirrored on the first 4 drives.  If you remove all 4 drives you will never be able to boot into the UP.  You will also lose all information as far as where your data is as that information is also contained in the Persistent Storage Manager (PSM) on the vault drives.    See the picture below of the VNX vault drive layout:

You may be able to recover if you only remove 2 drives max.but never all 4 drives.  SPAs Primary boot drive is 0_0 - its secondary is 0_2.  SPBs Primary boot drive is 0_1 and its Secondary 0_3.  Each SP will look for its boot image in that order.  If you remove 0_0 and 0_2, SPA will not boot and you may recover from SPB side.....and vice versa.

Please check the VNX Procedure Generator for the Instructions to Recover a boot Image.

So the Utility Partition (UP) is installed on drive 0_0 and 0_2 and on drive 0_1 and 0_3.

Can i take those 4 drive attach them to one server one by one and do Linux DD to copy all sectors from Vaulth drive to new drive?

These drives are formated with 520, maybe the server adapter can not see the drives or will?

I cannot recommend nor comment on that as you would be attempting to duplicate our VNX Block Operating Environment (OE) which would have licensing and cost factors associated with that. This is well beyond the normal scope of Recovering a Boot image (Non Destructive procedure) or Reimaging an array (Destructive Procedure).  

I'm on education course on emc trainig centre.

This is not customer or production env!

I just want to find way to copy or create new vaulth disk, but it seems that this is not will be easy.

I know that there is no procedure for that.

Tommorow will try to remove drive 0_0 and 0_2 and install new on these place and reimage trought other running SP, then will repeat steps and i will have copy of these 4 drive i think...

Of course they are ways to create new vault drives – but I dont think this is done outside of specific departments in EMC.

You do need special software and instructions for that.

Its not as simple as you think.

Ok i can not create new vaulth drive- i understanded that.

But i will try to copy existing drive.

I've made a bet with my instructor and i think to win this bet.

There is another idea that just through my mind:

I have one CX4 Clarr the Clarr has 2gb/s OES DAE, the rest DAEs running on 4GB/S, but OS DAE has only old 146GB  2GB/s drives.

I have new 5 146GB Drives that can run on 2/4GB/s.

I will replace every disk from vaulth drives one by one starting with last one 0_4.

I will wating rebuild to finish and then will replace next disk 0_3.

After the 0_0 disk will reboot both SPs- first B then A and hope that "Windows" will boot up.

If success i will remove all disk that running on 2GB/s on Bus 0 and will add new one that can run on 4GB/s.

Then i can run reset back end command and.. voala my bus 0 now running on 4 GB/s.

Am i right?

Yes, that is the basic procedure.  All of this is in the CLARiiON Procedure Generator whuich I would urge you to review. Swapping Vault drives and any other 2Gb drives, swapping out the DAE with a 4Gb DAE and resetting the Backend bus speed.....al these procedures are there.

After swapping the drives with 4Gb drives you must ensure that every piece of HW on the loop can run at 4Gb else resetting the BE bus speed will fail. This includes the primary DAE 0_0 as mentioned.

I have copy of first 4 disks on one 5500 VNX.

I've replaced one by one every disk from 0_3 to 0_0 and now i have 8 Vault disks.

I wonder if i put these 4 disk in another VNX 5500 or 5700 and power up will it start or not?

I saw that on POST VNX check S/N on array and S/N on disk and if they match then start booting from disks.

So if i exchange the disk may be this check won't match and array won't boot.

Am i right?

No, you cannot replace vault drives one-by-one to get a spare-vault-drive-set.

The result of your above steps is that you have 4 vault drives, but each with a different timestamp.

The best way to recover a system where you lost all vault drives is to get one vault drive from a corresponding model, use that vault-drive to boot UP and restore both SPA and SPB images to get a factory default state.

Succes with your Vault-Deep-Dive!

it is possible to recover the boot image on a storage processor . you should first know the recover procedure. then in a way you have to boot minisetup and startup UP next install OS recover images, upload the recover image to the storage system the sellecting that image to recover the to Recover OS and finally installing the image on the storage processor

What happened to the foreign drive policy ?

Regards,

Sheron

Dear Mr reazei

I Want to Learn recovery Procedure (Reimaging) . but there is no any reference about that .

would you please share a Good reference ?

.

Best regards

Hi

I have searched many times to get Recover SP Boot Image (non-distructive) like below link, its seems its kind of top secrets

https://wenku.baidu.com/view/885f5300e53a580216fcfec1.html

Thanks

Hamid

This is a service operation

if you are a qualified service partner you have access to the documentation and tools

if not and you are using some old internal docs from dubious websites than you do this at your own risk