I would engage EMC Support to help with this one. We just did a FLARE 24 to 26 upgrade on a new array we put on the floor with two AIX hosts attached to test out the NDU requirement for going to 26. It was an incredibly painful process involving unmounting file systems changing settings and remounting. The worst part was that after we had the HEAT reports generated we were told by a CLARiiON specialist that the HEAT didn't actual highlight everything we had to do, and they gave us more APARs, HBA settings, and various other setting to change.

I don't think our account team finds it as amusing as I do when I point out that the concept of NDU isn't really valid in the real world on CLARiiONs. And they especially don't like it when I point out that 2/3 of NDU is DU (otherwise know as Data Unavailable). Of course, it doesn't help that the last three major FLARE code upgrades we did caused outages to large numbers of hosts (even after EMC checked everything and said it would be OK).

Ouh... You had a lot of problem with these NDUs... It is discouraging.
Allen, could you please explain what "HEAT" is ?

Does anyone have a better experience with NDUs involving AIX servers ?

When you run an EMCGrab or EMCReports from the host and send it in to EMC they run it through a tool that generates a "HEAT" report. I can't remeber what it stands for off the top of my head, but it is supposed to tell you the state of the host and if everything is configured up to required specifications. If there are patches missing, incorrect setting, etc, it should be highlighted in the HEAT report.

you can run your own HEAT reports now ..finally

https://servicetools.emc.com/heat.php

Allen,
Were the NDU (actually I think it is Non-Disruptive Upgrade) issues you had isolated to AIX hosts? I have never supported AIX on a SAN and am not familiar with the platform dependencies.

I am curious because I have rarely seen issues resulting from NDU FLARE upgrades (all Windows hosts), and even upgrades from one platform to another (Cx600 to Cx700 for example). Of course that does not mean they don't happen but it just doesn't appear to be a common occurrence to me.

Amen to that. This really simplifies the process. Now if they could just make the HEAT report comprehensive I'd be ecstatic. It catches a lot of the stuff, but the last time we had issues a manual review by a CLARiiON specialist found half a dozen things that hadn't been identified on the HEAT.

WOW! When did this appear?

My CE doesn't even know about this!

Host Environment Analysis Tool

https://forums.emc.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=66560&tstart=0

neither did mine ...i think it became available a couple of weeks ago, can't find the thread now but somebody posted it in the symmetrix forum. I was excited as hell ..don't have to beg my CE to run them for me or open tickets with support.