Last summer, our F540 failed, and we moved our data to an F740. Two days later, the system crashed everytime it hit 51% of a disk-rebuild. Ultimately, it was determined that the onboard FC-AL controller was bad and the system board was replaced with one from a slightly older F740. We've been fine ever since. NetApp sent us a PCI FC-AL card, "just in case", but it's still in the box, unused.
Having followed the "AW: 'Loop break detected' followed by failover" thread, and noted that people seem to be using the PCI adapters now, instead of the onboard adapters, and that apparently NetApp is shipping them with the PCI adapter standard now, I'm in a quandry.
Should I proactively install the PCI adapter and switch to it, or should I leave well enough alone? Can someone at NetApp comment on this and give me some guidance?
TIA, -ste
Should I proactively install the PCI adapter and switch to it, or should I leave well enough alone? Can someone at NetApp comment on this and give me some guidance?
Having been bitten by the problem on one of our systems (a C760), and where the problem took ages to diagnose -- this was before the problem became fashionable -- I'd personally be inclined to schedule some down-time one quiet sunday morning and change over just in case. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.
Chances are, you'll be just fine with the on-board controller. Just eency-weency maybe not.
Nick -- | Nick Hilliard | nick@iol.ie | | Tel: +353 1 6046800 | Advanced Systems Architect | | Fax: +353 1 6046888 | Ireland On-Line System Operations |
On Fri, 12 Nov 1999, Shaun T. Erickson wrote:
Last summer, our F540 failed, and we moved our data to an F740. Two days later, the system crashed everytime it hit 51% of a disk-rebuild.
Yup... one of our filers exhibited the same behaviour at 4%. Problem was solved by moving the loop to a slot-based FC-AL adapter. I would schedule the downtime and install the slot-based one. Two of my F740's never had a problem with the on-board adapter either, but since Netapp sent me replacements, I used them. Based on experience, I figure the probability of a slot-based adapter failing are much less than that of the on-board adapter.
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Brian Tao -
Nick Hilliard -
Shaun T. Erickson