Dell Unity: How to perform a management services (ECOM) failover (Dell Correctable)

Summary: This article focuses on different ways to perform manual failover of management services on Unity arrays.

This article applies to This article does not apply to This article is not tied to any specific product. Not all product versions are identified in this article.
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Instructions

Usage:
Failing over Management Services (MGMT/ECOM) can be used for advanced troubleshooting, such as log gathering, testing the management network configuration, and so on.


Prerequisites:
Both Unity Storage Processors are required to be attached to the network. 
Reference the Unity XT installation guide:
Dell Unity™ All Flash and Unity Hybrid Unity 480/F, Unity 680/F, Unity 880/F Installation and Service Guide 
Sections "Installation Procedures"- "Attach the storage processors to the network"

  • The SPA and SPB network management ports must be connected on the same subnet.
  • In general, both SPs should have mirrored configurations to provide High Availability (HA), failover, and so on.

Methods to perform Management (MGMT) failover
Method #1: Using service command

  1. Verify which SP is holding ECOM (in the example below is SPA):
 service@(none) spa:~# pgrep ECOM
 21933
  1. Run command to failover MGMT:
root@(none) spa:/# svc_restart_service failover MGMT
Found ECOM on spa, will failover to spb

Waiting for ECOM to stop.........................
Waiting for ECOM to failover..................... << expected connection drop, as the primary SP fails over to the secondary
SSH Session will disconnect here............... << reconnect to session.
  1. Verify which SP is holding ECOM (should be now SPB):
service@(none) spa:~# ssh peer
service@(none) spb:~# pgrep ECOM
21933

If it fails, see KB article Dell Unity: Command "svc_restart_service failover MGMT" not working correctly (Dell Correctable)

Method #2: Physically on the array

  1. Verify which SP is primary (step 1 in Method #1 above).
  2. Pull out the network cable from the Primary SP's management port.
  3. Wait for about 15 minutes, for the management failover to be fully completed.
  4. Connect the network cable back to the SP's management port.

To monitor the array from either UI or CLI:

 

  1. Ping the primary SP and wait for ping loss.
  2. There will be a ping response after a while (approximately 5 minutes). This is an indication of management services restarting on the peer SP.
  3. Wait for another 5 minutes after a successful ping response. After a failover, the management services take another 5 minutes to start completely.
  4. Log in to Unisphere and confirm Unity's health Status or run command:
uemcli -no /sys/general healthcheck -detail

Additional Information

For additional assistance with the above steps, contact Dell Technical Support or your Authorized Service Representative, and quote this Dell Knowledge Base article.

Affected Products

Dell EMC Unity Family |Dell EMC Unity All Flash

Products

Dell Unity 300, Dell EMC Unity 300F, Dell EMC Unity 350F, Dell EMC Unity 400, Dell EMC Unity 400F, Dell EMC Unity 450F, Dell EMC Unity 500, Dell EMC Unity 500F, Dell EMC Unity 550F, Dell EMC Unity 600, Dell EMC Unity 600F, Dell EMC Unity 650F , Dell EMC Unity Family |Dell EMC Unity All Flash, Dell EMC Unity Family, Dell EMC Unity Hybrid ...
Article Properties
Article Number: 000019807
Article Type: How To
Last Modified: 29 Dec 2025
Version:  5
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