This Dell EMC Customer Replaceable Unit (CRU) Video demonstrates the details of replacing a faulted disk in a VNX5200, VNX5400, VNX5600, VNX5800, VNX7600 and VNX800 system.
Hello, welcome to the VNX disk replacement video. In this video, we will briefly discuss features such as permanent sparing, drive mobility and Hot Spare policy provided by Multicore RAID MCR which was introduced with the MCX for the new VNX Systems followed by a demo on how to replace a faulted disk on the VNX systems.
MCR introduces the permanent sparing feature which allows the permanent replacement of the failed drive with spares. When a drive fails, MCR spares it to a suitable unused drive and that new drive becomes a part of the RAID group or storage pool. When a failed drive is replaced, it simply becomes unused. Upon any drive failure, excluding the vault drive MCR will wait for five minutes.
After the five minutes has passed array looks for a suitable replacement on the array. When enough of a match is found, the new drive is added to the RAID group and the label process happens. MCR also introduces the drive mobility feature. Drive mobility, also known as portable drives allows users to move VNX disks within the array.
Drive mobility is very closely related to the permanent sparing feature. MCR also introduces a new concept of Hot Spare policy to the VNX array where a Hot Spare policy monitors the number of unused drives which can be put into spares of a certain type in the system and posts a warning when that number is low.
There are three Hot Spare policies: Recommended, where one Hot Spare is present for every 30 drives Custom, which allows an administrator to specify the ratio and, finally, the No Hot Spare policy, this turns off the policy monitoring. Note: the No Hot Spare policy does not stop sparing.
A failed drive will always be spared, given that a suitable unused drive can be found on the system. Now let’s take a look at the procedure to replace a faulted disk on the VNX using USM. Unisphere Service Manager is a collection of tools which is used to install, upgrade, and maintain VNX storage systems.
As part of the procedure, we will locate the faulted disk, replace the disk and verify the replaced disk on the VNX system. In this demo, we will be replacing a two and a half inch disk. From the VNX Unisphere dashboard you can see that, under System Alerts, a faulted disk is reported. You can also notice that the corresponding DPE is reported as faulted. When a disk failure occurs on your system you will see the alert on your Unisphere dashboard.
Select the alert, right click and select “Details.” Here, you can see that Disk 8 on Bus 0 Enclosure 0 is faulted. Click on “OK,” close the “Alerts” window and we will navigate to the back-end storage view in Unisphere. Click on the “System” tab, select “Storage Hardware.” Here you can notice that the Bus 0 Enclosure 0 is faulted and, when you select the enclosure you can see the pictorial representation of the enclosure.
Now, let’s click on “Disks.” Here we can now scroll down to find the faulted disk. Now let’s select the faulted disk. The physical location of the faulted disk can also be seen on the diagram on the right. As you can see here, the picture taken from the array matches to what we see on the Unisphere.
If you zoom in, you can notice the default disk is amber in color. Now you can right click on the disk, and select “Replace Disk.” Once we click “Replace Disk” on Unisphere, this will automatically launch USM. USM, or Unisphere Service Manager, needs to be installed and it can be downloaded from EMC online support.
As you can see, we don’t have to manually log in to USM. The credentials are automatically passed to USM when we launch it from Unisphere. Now you can click on “Replace Faulted Disk.” The Disk Replacement Wizard appears. This wizard determines if a disk needs to be replaced and provides instructions on how to replace the disk. Click “Next” to continue; the VNX system will be analyzed.
Once the analysis is complete, click “Next.” In the Disk Analysis Summary, you can notice that the storage system is a candidate for disk drive replacement and it also represents the faulted disk which needs to be replaced. You can click on “Save As” and save this analysis, and include this in the service request opened to replace the faulted disk.
To order a replacement disk, you can click on the “Support” tab on Unisphere, or USM and launch the link to support.emc.com Click on “Support.” Here, click on “Service Center.” Now you can click on “Order a part replacement” to request a replacement for the faulted disk to be replaced on your system.
Here we can create a service request, to request the replacement disk. For the purpose of this demo, we have the replacement disk already. Click “Next” to continue. Here, you can notice that the faulted disk is red in color. You also have the option to click on “Turn on enclosure LEDs” which will flash amber lights on the enclosure and all the discs in the enclosure. This will enable you to easily find the enclosure on your array in your data center.
Next, you can click on “Replacement Instructions” which will provide the instructions on how to replace the faulted disk. Please review the instructions carefully before replacing the disk on your VNX system. The faulted disk needs to be carefully removed from the enclosure, by pushing down the release tab.
Once the disk has been removed, insert the new disk into the slot until it’s properly seated and push in the release tab. Once the disk has been replaced, you can put back the bezel on the DAE. For the purpose of this demo, we have already replaced the drive, following the instructions we have seen before.
Once the drive has been successfully replaced you can now see that the status of the drive has turned to green. Click “Next” to continue. Here, you can notice the summary of the drive replacement procedure. You can now return the faulted drives back to your service provider.
You can now click “Next” to register the service activity with your service provider. We will now log back into Unisphere, to verify the status of the replaced drive. Now that the disk has been replaced successfully from VNX Unisphere, you will notice that the drive is presently unbound and can be used for creating storage pools and RAID groups. For additional resources, you can review the USM Release Notes and the “Replacing a Disk Module” section of Unisphere online help.
Thanks a lot for watching the video.
