We've always had cluster failover on our filers for those times when something goes wrong on one filer and the other filer can serve the data. Realistically speaking, that rarely happens because the filers are stable. However, as time passes and the filers grow older, the develop more and more "personality."
For example, we have a pair of F760s that are our problem children. As much as we'd like to pawn them off to another group, put them out to pasture, or replace them outright, that does not appear to be happening in the near future. Unfortunately, one of them has now developed a problem with a memory DIMM on the motherboard. In the past, we've had the luxury of being able to shut down the clustered pair of filers, but in our price conscious environment, people are asking what is the point of clustering if we can't do maintenance and keep the data available.
So, my question is this: is it possible to work on a filer head while serving the data up from the cluster partner? My concern is that you are upsetting the FC-AL integrity because we'll have to unplug the FC-AL cables from the adapters on the head when we pull the motherboard tray out. Then, since the recommended course of action is to run diagnostics after reseating and/or replacing the DIMMs, could we run a small set of the diagnostics before plugging in the FC-AL cables? Maybe we could / should use the FC-AL reset function from the diagnostics menu to get the loops back to normal?
Maybe we've just been too cautious with our data, but I'd like to hear from other toasters if this is possible, advisable, and safe before putting our data at risk.
Thanks,
Geoff