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#177521 - 2007-07-03 06:58 PM Translation, please
Richard H. Administrator Offline
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A real email that I have just received from tech support at a very well known supplier regarding an unexplained series of hard drive failures...

 Quote:
Dear Richard,

Thanks for the email.

This is the updates i got from the SME and get an update if this updates still giving issues for same failure. We will replace all the 12 disks at that stage.

Cheers


Eh?

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#177522 - 2007-07-03 07:26 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Richard H.]
Shawn Administrator Offline
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rofl ... but did you actually get "an update" ?
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#177523 - 2007-07-03 07:35 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Shawn]
Richard H. Administrator Offline
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You know, I'm not entirely sure.

It's all a bit... Zen.

Perhaps if I say it over and over again as a mantra it will clear my mind and allow me to see that which is occluded.

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#177528 - 2007-07-03 08:32 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Richard H.]
NTDOC Administrator Offline
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And here I thought you guys spoke English as well in England.
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#177530 - 2007-07-03 09:09 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: NTDOC]
Shawn Administrator Offline
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lol, Richard's bi-lingual - he speaks English and Engrish.
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#177532 - 2007-07-03 09:33 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Shawn]
Mart Moderator Offline
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LOL

So if there is an update for the update he got from SME and the updated drives are updated once more he will replace the drives on witch you just updated the update or is this just a status update so you are updated of the status of the failure of 12 drives that need to be updated?

WTF is he talking about? Maybe you should send him a link to the thread
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#177533 - 2007-07-03 10:19 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Mart]
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 Originally Posted By: Mart
WTF is he talking about? Maybe you should send him a link to the thread



Think that might end up in a lost or upset customer ;\)

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#177540 - 2007-07-04 12:10 AM Re: Translation, please [Re: NTDOC]
Lonkero Administrator Offline
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customer?

he's a techie, isn't he/she?
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#177551 - 2007-07-04 02:23 AM Re: Translation, please [Re: Lonkero]
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Well even Techie can be a customer. No one knows everything.
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#177583 - 2007-07-05 09:05 AM Re: Translation, please [Re: NTDOC]
Björn Offline
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rofl! Someone call teh police, we have a update on the run, OR, 12 disks running loose!
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#177584 - 2007-07-05 09:15 AM Re: Translation, please [Re: Björn]
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So in order to get the 12 disks replaced the Techie has to get an update for his already gotten update and if that update still gives the HDD's trouble then all 12 get replaced ?

I'm guessing firmware updates ?

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#177586 - 2007-07-05 09:37 AM Re: Translation, please [Re: Arend_]
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SME sounds like a raid-controller if I'm not mistaken. so yeah, firmware updates doesn't sound that far off. So if the updates doesn't fix it, they'll replace the diskset.. or something.
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#177603 - 2007-07-05 12:20 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Björn]
Lonkero Administrator Offline
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hmm...
richie, is this a server or some sort of storage box?
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#177956 - 2007-07-14 06:52 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Lonkero]
Richard H. Administrator Offline
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It's 6 blades, each of which have two disks in a Raid 1 configuration.

On every blade, one of the disks is marked bad - if I reseat the disk it rebuilds and is good for a short while and then one of the pair is marked bad again, though not necessarily the same one that was originally bad

The servers and disks are very new, and all disks failed at around the same time.

So the tech support guy is sending me 12 new disks to replace *all* the disks in the blades. This means I will have to swap out the currently failed drive, wait for the RAID to repair then swap out the other drive.

Sounds like a pointless exercise to me, but then as I've already been instructed to apply a firmware upgrade which isn't supported on these disks and watched as the program failed completely to do any useful update nothing surprises me.

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#177957 - 2007-07-14 06:59 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Richard H.]
Shawn Administrator Offline
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The 12 new disks - are they a different model or exact same ? Sounds point-less to me too.
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#177959 - 2007-07-14 09:12 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Shawn]
Lonkero Administrator Offline
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sounds like changing the whole blades would be in order \:\)
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#177960 - 2007-07-14 11:42 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Lonkero]
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What is common to all 6 blades? Is there a backplane or controller or something like that, that all of them use in common?

Has to be nearly impossible for all drives to go bad at once. Same for different blades to all go bad at the same time so something either hardware of software that is common to all of them has to be the culprit.

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#177963 - 2007-07-15 03:58 AM Re: Translation, please [Re: NTDOC]
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Could be heat as well.
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#177964 - 2007-07-15 02:35 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Sealeopard]
Glenn Barnas Administrator Offline
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 Originally Posted By: Sealeopard
Could be heat as well.

Last summer, I worked on a project where we used an HP blade chassis. When it arrived, the local admin unpacked it and assembled it. He fired it up, and it failed after running for a while. I dug through the trash and pulled out the documentation. Reading the quickstart guide, I found that if you install 4 of the six power supply / fan modules, you can't install 1,2,3,4 as he did, you need to install 1,3,4,6. I repositioned the power supplies, fan modules, and redistributed the blades, and the problem disappeared.

The point is - even minor misconfiguration in the blade chassis can cause problems across the blades themselves. It's possible that you received drives from a defective manufacturing lot, but my money would be on a bad or misconfigured cooling module, or a power supply that's impacting the +12v line in the chassis. Only the drives use 12v nowadays, and noise on that line can impact the rotational accuracy enough to trigger a drive "failure". With SMART drives, they report errors back to the controller that could be interpreted as a motor failure.

Glenn
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#177968 - 2007-07-15 11:39 PM Re: Translation, please [Re: Glenn Barnas]
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And what happened to the days where an actual Engineer would come on site to determine the root cause and fix it on the spot. Ah, I suppose those days left when their profits went from 45% markup on everything to 3 or 4% markup on everything ;\)

Well now that you have everyone's curiosity going Richard you'll have to keep us posted with the real cause and fix.

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