The ability to take spare disks from system to system used to be true but it broke a while ago. There is also the issue of the DS14 MK1 vs. MK2 shelf issue. The old drives that you have in DS14 MK1 system can not be inserted into DS14 MK2 shelves either. But that is progress. I think NetApp in general tries pretty hard to be backward compatible where they can. The new "Universal" keyed drives on the MK2 shelves can be inserted into MK1 shelves as well.
Are you saying that you can zero a disk on a 6.5 system to be used in a 6.4 system? I will not work either with just a simple spares_zero command (which only zeros a spare). The problems is DataOntap will refuse to put the drives into the system. You have to completely rewrite the label on the drive. To do so requires that you reboot and drop into the maintenance menu and then pick the option to re-label the drive.
Anyone know why this is the case? I can't think of a good reason for doing so. The rationale is suppose to be that once you upgraded the system to 6.5, you need to revert and do extra work to go back to running 6.4. But this is a pain when you maintain a large number of filers and have to now keep track of one other unnecessary thing.
I think at a minimum NetApp should do a better job of proactively telling the sys admins so they don't get surprised at the last minute. If we know about these sort of things we can plan ahead and avoid the problems.
Derek
-----Original Message----- From: Stephane [mailto:stephane.bentebba@fps.fr] Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 12:41 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Cc: Jean-Jacques ARNOUX Subject: spares disks no more equivalent from one filer to another one
for those who want to know about :
netapp used to code its Ontapp soft the way it permit any spare from one filer to go to another one, transparently (your hand doing the job though), hot swappable and so on you were able to keep one spare in each filer and one extra disk in a safe place (in case of emergency)
now there is a little trick that worth to be known : if a some of your filer are in >= 65 and other filer are in <= 64 you can get a 64 spare disk and put it in one of your 65 filer but you can't do the reverse also if you have putted a disk in 65 (just as like a spare one) you cant put it back in a 64 filer
ontap code something - i dont know what - that trigger an error message when you put a 65 spare disk in a 64 filer : "X..._ST... this disk is from a newer version, either remove this disk or upgrade the os"
i was told you have 3 possibilities : - ask netapp for a disk as a replacement to this one - put the disk in a 65 ontap which will "write" on the disk a way it could be include in a 64 system - upgrade the dot in 65
i tested the second solution unsuccessfully and in case you don't want to wait for a replacement and do not want to upgrade (for the moment) the only solution i found is to zeroing the disk
zeroing the disk mean erasing all data on all disks in order to reinstall a new filesystem from scratch so, do so only if u know what you are doing
bye