This discussion is now open for your questions. We look forward to an interesting, fun and informative Ask the Expert event.

I'll start with a quesiton posed by one of my clients recently: "What does the USM Health Check utility evaluate to determine health of the system"?

The tool performs the following heath checks:

•Network Connectivity

•Management Service Status

•Storage Processor Status

•Hot Spare Status

•No Disk Faults

•Disk Status

•VNX OE for Block Committed

•Data Mover Status

•No Hardware Component Faults

When the health check completes, you can view all status details in the summary report at the bottom of the dialog box, or the status details of each individual rule by clicking its associated icon.

glen

Does network connectivity help to determine impact on Mirror View sessions or other replication features that rely on network infrastructure? If not, what would you suggest as a next step?

Hi there

This may be very basic question ... Can anybody tell me how to perform health check from USM ?

I only found Diagnostics>Verify Storage System> Storage System Verification wizard ...

Is this it ?

If it is .... seems only get Block side information ... Can USM be able to check VNX file side health check as well ?

thanks !

Aya

Hey there Aya,

You are correct in using the Verify Storage System function of USM to do a health check on the block side. The methods and procedures for running a health check differ for the Block and File operating environments. The following sections explain how to run a health check on a VNX Unified array using the following methods:

• VNX BLOCK operating environment - Using the Verify Storage System function of USM.
• VNX FILE operating environment -  Using the VNX nasadmin command line interface and using the Prepare for Installation function in the Unisphere USM System Software dialog.

I hope this helps,

Nathan

Most customers may not realize that they can actually upgrade their VNX OE (Operating Environment) to the latest version of code by themselves. Because the VNX is fully redundant this can be done non-disruptively though it is good to note this only is the case if your hosts have redundant connections to the VNX (i.e. 2 paths, 2 switches, etc). It is recommended that the code upgrade should be done during a maintenance window though so the load on the array is minimal.

First you have to download the latest version of code. You can do that by opening up USM and going here:

"Array" > Software > Downloads > Download VNX Software Updates

Then after you have the code on a File or disk go to:

"Array" > Software > System Software

• Step 1 runs a health check and verifies the system can be upgraded
• Step 2 is the actual installation of the software

(Note: This is non-disruptive but the SPs will be rebooted one at a time. So there will be a bit of a performance hit.)

Once the process is complete your VNX will be on the latest version of code.

In the most current version of USM, once you've logged into the array or the Control Station (using the IP address for the CS or the SPA/SPB), in the lower right corner under the Tools section, you'll find Health Check, click this to run the check. Most of the checks for for the array, and one check for the Data Movers.

The Verify Storage System check under the Diagnostics section is another check that, depending on the type of issue, is a bit more complete.

USM Versions with Health Check:

OE Release 32

UnisphereServiceManager-Win-32-x86-en_US-1.2.26.1.0068-1

OE Release 33 (the recently released Next Generation VNX) - this is backwards compatible with the older VNX and CLARiiON arrays

UnisphereServiceManager-Win-32-x86-en_US-1.3.0.1.0015-1

glen

BTW: the Health Check is an invaluable tool for quickly determining if there are issues on the array

As any Storage Admin knows, in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except Death, Taxes, and Drive failures.

If you happen to notice a drive failure there and you would like to replace it yourself there is a simple way to get this done.

First you will need to open up a USM session to your VNX with the faulted disk. Then go to:

"Array" > Hardware > Hardware Replacement > Replace Faulted Disk

(There is a shortcut if you are already in Unisphere. Just go to "Array" > System > hardware > Storage Hardware. Then under “Service Tasks” on the bottom right, select “Replace Faulted Disk”)

After you are in USM all you need to do is go through the Wizard which will walk you through all the steps to getting rid of that bad disk.

I would like to understand if anything has changed between CX/VNX/VNX2 in terms of preventive disk failure. I'll give a synopsis of what happened to our CX3-80 last year. 5+1R5 group presented to Celerra, one drive in the raid group fails. No problem, HS kicks in and starts rebuilding. Five hours into rebuild, another drive in the same RG starts throwing off media errors and goes down. After many hours of troubleshooting EMC Support declared LUNs that were in the middle of rebuilt were toasted ..data loss. So the question comes up, why did this happen ? Why your "maintenance" task (BV ?) did not catch issues with drives that were still spinning but had media issues and not proactively replaced.

Thanks