PowerScale OneFS 9.X.X: Resolved: The write-cache for the drive in the following location is enabled

Summary: Users may see the following error or something similar, for one or more nodes, after one or more nodes has rebooted. OneFS disabled the write-cache to comply with recommended drive settings. "Resolved: The write-cache for the drive in the following location is enabled: Chassis Serial Number JXXXXXXXXXXXX1, Node 4, Sled E, Slot 1, Type HDD, LNUM 0, Serial XXXXXXXX." ...

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Symptoms

The change was that the node rebooted. You may not see this message for all the drives (maybe only one or two drives across the cluster).

Users see this alert, or something similar, and want to know what caused the issue and whether a drive has gone bad:

Resolved: The write-cache for the drive in the following location is enabled: Chassis Serial Number JXXXXXXXXXXXX1, Node 4, Sled E, Slot 1, Type HDD, LNUM 0, Serial XXXXXXXX. OneFS disabled the write-cache to comply with recommended drive settings. Replace the drive according to the instructions in the H400 Drive Replacement Guide.

This is only seen on Gen6 Clusters.

Cause

The issue is, by default, the write-cache on the drive is disabled, and during a reboot, the write-cache appears to be changed to enabled. The system reports this information which usually is cosmetic in nature and can be ignored upon checking the Write Cache Enabled value.

This is addressed in a future OneFS release. The Dell Engineering team is working on changing the event notifications.

Resolution

Run the below commands to confirm the drive's status and that the drive write-cache is disabled:     

  1. Verify the status of the drives, and check if there are any drives which are not healthy:       
# isi_for_array 'isi devices list | grep -iv "healthy" | grep -iv "L3"
  1. Check that the drive's write cache is disabled:       
# camcontrol modepage da<drive da number> -m 8 -P 0
The above command displays a list of values, similar to the following:  
Cluster-8# isi_for_array -n4 camcontrol modepage da3 -m 8 -P 0
Cluster-4: IC: 0
Cluster-4: ABPF: 0
Cluster-4: CAP: 0
Cluster-4: DISC: 0
Cluster-4: SIZE: 0
Cluster-4: WCE: 0
Cluster-4: MF: 0
Cluster-4: RCD: 0
Cluster-4: Demand Retention Priority: 0
Cluster-4: Write Retention Priority: 0
Cluster-4: Disable Pre-fetch Transfer Length: 0
Cluster-4: Minimum Pre-fetch: 0
Cluster-4: Maximum Pre-fetch: 0
Cluster-4: Maximum Pre-fetch Ceiling: 0
Check the value associated with the Write Cache Enabled (WCE) Parameter for each command. If WCE is set to 0, then we can safely ignore and quiet the alert. If the value is set to 1, open a service request.
 
The commands for Step 2 only run on Gen6/PowerScale Hybrid hardware.

Affected Products

Isilon, Isilon A200, Isilon A2000, Isilon F800, Isilon F810, Isilon Gen6, Isilon H400, Isilon H500, Isilon H5600, Isilon H600
Article Properties
Article Number: 000170338
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 29 May 2025
Version:  6
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