Heads Up ! – EMC VNX2 – Potential Data Unavailability

I’m back from the wilderness !

Whenever I see an EMC ETA with the words “Potential Data Unavailability”, I give it immediate attention. Data. Is. Everything.

This hot off the press item is titled “ETA 489936: VNX2: A firmware issue may cause certain solid state drives to become faulted, which may result in data unavailability if the drives are part of the same RAID group” Grab the full details HERE.

You also see the advisory in USM at logon;

It’s not the first time we’ve all seen issues with VNX firmware, and certainly not the first time I’ve blogged about how to apply the fixes:

http://www.pragmaticio.com/2015/01/emc-vnxvmax-600gb-15k-drive-warning/

In any case, the process to upgrade drive firmware is dead easy, fast and painless.

Are you affected ? The details relate to specific version of Flash drives, with the following part numbers;

• 118033078,118033079, 118033080, 005050598, 005050599, 005050600, 005050112, 005050113, 005050114, 005050115, 005050116, 005050117.

It’s also important to know that the vulnerability exists under certain, specific conditions.

Check for the Unisphere console by applying filters to the System > Disks tab.

Check using naviseccli by using the following scriptlet to return all instances in your array;

Add the -quiet switch to simply return a “True” if the part is found, which is a bit more concise

To apply the workaround *, follow the previous instruction I have blogged about here, complete with screenshots. It’s a simple fast process using Unisphere Service Manager.

You can also  create a customised instruction guide from https://mydocuments.emc.com/

Have fun and look after your data,

• I use the term workaround as the firmware upgrade does not complete resolve the root cause of the issue, but puts measures in place to prevent the required operating conditions for failure to occur. I’ll update when the actual fix is in available.