Re: Lost large string of disks.

On Fri, 2021-01-08 at 15:06 +0000, Rob Berendt wrote:

On the bright side we have redundant vHMC's, in different cities. 
Both capable of controlling the power systems in the other's city.

Seems like it was lucky that you didn't buy them both at the same time
(well the disks within each machine that is) as then they would both
have timed out at exactly the same point (assuming they were both
always powered up for the same lengths of time)...

I remember reading about it a while back, seems like a really bad thing
to program in to a disk... if data > x; trash disk; 

That it can't be undone seems to be a massive failing in the
hardware/firmware design. There didn't at the time seem to be much in
the way of explanation; just that some value was set and it was good
bye disk. I could understand it if say it was borked to the point that
firmware couldn't be updated... but it seemed that updating firmware
was possible but internally some setting got written that could never
be unset to the point that you couldn't even re-format (one thing to
have lost the data, another for the drive to be dead). Was it some
"life remaining"/"wear level re-writes" counter that was supposed to be
a guide, that ended up being a kill setting?

Is the manufacturer replacing drives that kill themselves? It would
seem that they would be at fault, but what do I know (and besides 4.5
years is suspiciously close to a 5 year warranty).

Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to:  7310 Innovation Blvd, Suite 104
          Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
Ship to:  7310 Innovation Blvd, Dock 9C
          Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
http://www.dekko.com


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
Rob Berendt
Sent: Friday, January 8, 2021 9:56 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <
midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Lost large string of disks.

Ok this is not specifically a midrange-l kind of thing except as a
darn good lesson as to why you really should "fix things that aren't
broken".
Cisco generated a technote on their vmware servers.  Basically the
SSD's on them will die after 40,000 hours (~ 4.5 years) unless you
get this firmware update.  Putting the firmware update on after they
fail is too late - the SSD's will still need to be replaced.  We had
to restore numerous vm's (still working on a vHMC - does that qualify
as a midrange-l issue?).
Oh, and since vHMC wasn't windows it didn't show up in the "give a
crap" list by the Windows team to schedule backups and I get the
privilege of rebuilding it.
We planned on upgrading them last year.  Got one done then got hit by
a capital expenditure freeze.  Meeting today on detail vmware server
specs...  Moving to HP.

We failed to notice this technote (um, not my job):

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/field-notices/705/fn70545.html




Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to:  7310 Innovation Blvd, Suite 104
          Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
Ship to:  7310 Innovation Blvd, Dock 9C
          Ft. Wayne, IN 46818
http://www.dekko.com

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