Repurpsoing/retiring a server through the Lifecycle Controller

Hi @budbud97,

Without any documented information, I can't inform what method does the data wiping use, I did read it uses Sanitize and Erase. 

If a drive fails to wipe for some reason, how do I know it?

Lifecycle logs will have an entry, if any issue or the process is success. 

I briefly saw on screen that it had an issue with one of the drives. However, it showed up so briefly that I could read it.

We may need more information about the erase error you mentioned, maybe a screenshot or try to perform the process again to check what was the message, for me to try to look for more information.

Reference on system erase: https://dell.to/3XpRAUQ

just use DBAN or CBL Data Shredder.

make a live usb and boot from that, then you can wipe all the drives.

They both have a GUI so you can monitor and make sure everything is wiped

dban development stopped a few years ago. I've ran it and had some troubling results when it won't recognize a raid controller. Also, when a drive fails to wipe, but doesn't fail enough for it to kick on an amber light, then I have to do it over again. CBL I haven't tried, but it doesn't seem like a very mature product. Neither one look like they have the features I'm looking for. I'd rather use the enterprise level setup that is already built in. I have multiple servers (and tons of drives) to wipe, so I don't want to have a bunch going that I have to baby and watch over constantly.

I was able to grab the message that would come up before it would proceed through the list of things that it does to wipe everything on the server.

When I selected all of the items under the storage section, it had both checkboxes to check to cryptographically wipe drives and the standard wipe (overwrite). I didn't grab a screenshot of that so I don't remember the exact wording. Anyway, upon clicking through the menus to get the process going, it would show this message:

Message SYS204: Unable to perform the drive erase operation because compatible Standard Disks are not found.

After this, then it would fully boot into the lifecycle controler and proceed to do everything else that I set it to do, such as default the bios settings, cryptographically wipe the other drives, etc. The funny thing is that all of the spinning drives I have in there are the same make/model (ordered with the server).

I do want to mention that this doesn't happen every time. I have multiple servers, and some have not shown that message about compatible Standard disks not being found. Sometimes it shows that a couple of the disks need a standard wipe, and, upon reboot, will proceed to wipe those. Sometimes none of them will be recognized as standard disks and it will cryptographically wipe all of the drives. On a few I have initiated the wiping process (when a standard disk is being wiped), restarted it, went through the process of wiping the drives again, and finding that all of the disks are now able to be cryptographically wiped this next time around.

Oh, and if a standard drive doesn't get wiped, it does show something in the lifecycle controller logs. But the server still shuts down after the other processes are done with. That leaves me to wonder if everything was wiped, and then I have to boot it back up and go through the logs. Annoying.

In a nutshell, the process can be different, even on seemly identical setups, and I haven't figured out the rhyme or reason why. When I have these servers that I want  to clear out, I really don't care to baby and watch over them this closely. It's not a big deal for one or two servers, but, when you have a bunch, it can be confusing if they are behaving differently.

budbud97,

I would look to see if there is any similarity on the drives you are seeing the issue on the drives it is successful on, such as size, type, firmware level, if the host server is up to date as well. I state that as I am curious if the ones you are seeing the issues on are behond on something and it is causing a hang up.