I'm thinking of buying a used Blade 2000. I've been offered a Dell 147
GB F-CAL (fibre) disk. Are Suns fussy about their disks, or will pretty
much any FCAL disk work in a Blade 2000?

I know on the older machines, it rarely seems to matter who makes the
SCSI disk. One usually has to label non-Sun disks, but that is about it.
But I've not no idea if this freedom extends to fibre disks.

On 2007-09-27, Dave <sorry-no-email@nowhere.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking of buying a used Blade 2000. I've been offered a Dell 147
> GB F-CAL (fibre) disk. Are Suns fussy about their disks, or will pretty
> much any FCAL disk work in a Blade 2000?
>
> I know on the older machines, it rarely seems to matter who makes the
> SCSI disk. One usually has to label non-Sun disks, but that is about it.
> But I've not no idea if this freedom extends to fibre disks.

W-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-llll. This is long, but bear with me...

I bought a SB2000 a couple of months ago, from eBay, after my main home machine
(an Ultra 60) died in a lightning strike. (Trying to claim on the insurance for
a non-PC, non-Mac computer was amusing, but that's another story). The SB2000
has twin 73GB disks, 4 GB of memory and twin 1.2GHz processors and initially I
was delighted with it.

I reinstalled everything, restored from the U60 backup tapes and was poised on
brink of getting disk mirroring set up (which I'd put off, because it's fiddly
to do and the sort of thing I only do rarely (the systems I work on at work are
set up by other people)) when it started crashing. No errors, nothing in syslog,
it just died. I dd'd /home to the other disk to save my work. Then I noticed I
was getting UFS log rollover errors from the boot disk - they weren't getting
syslogged, just coming on the console, so I never saw them unless I was actually
there. After a day of crashes of increasing frequency, it would no longer boot
from the main disk. Booting from DVD, the main disk could no longer be seen by
the system at all. probe-scsi also couldn't see it at all.

So I contacted the supplier, who was absolutely brilliant throughout, and he
sent me another 73Gb disk. This is where it gets relevant to you. The original
disks were Sun badged ones. The replacement disk was a Fujitsu one. The original
disk was c1t1d0, the new one came up as c1t33d0, and I *could* *not* make its
logical ID correct (and no-one responded when I posted here asking for help -
not to worry, I learned loads about luxadm, OBP, FC-AL disks and so on). I
decided to press ahead regardless and run the machine with c1t33d0 and c1t2d0,
but first I ran a surface analysis on the new disk. Hundreds of errors, where it
said that the error was repairable, but was unable to determine the block ID to
repair it.

I contacted the supplier again, and he sent me another new disk, only this time
another Sun badged one, identical to the original. This came up as c1t1d0
immediately, surface analysis ran fine, so I installed it. By this time, I'd
reinstalled everything (again) on c1t2d0, so I just made c1t1d0 the mirror. It's
been absolutely fine for about 10 days now. (I do need to swap the boot disk
back to c1t1d0, I suppose).

So ... my conclusion? I'd be inclined to think that the SB2000 *is* picky about
disks, and if I ever need to fit another, I shall be choosy about what I buy.
Would I ever buy another machine with FC-AL disks? Probably not.

Oh, and "Dear Mr. Sun", what's the point in fitting hot swappable disks to a
machine with a power supply interlock on its access panel, so you can't open it
up "hot" to swap the disks anyway?


--
"Religion poisons everything."
[email me at huge {at} huge (dot) org <dot> uk]

In comp.sys.sun.admin Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88@comcast.net> wrote:
> If EMC thinks they are defective they MIGHT be OK.

I know. That's why I put them into the SB1000. We have a policy of not
giving back failed disks. Instead we keep them and physically destroy
them from time to time.

90% of the "failed" EMC disks are indeed Ok. They may have spin-up problems
or a few entries in the grown defect list. But basically they are Ok.

The EMC firmware also doesn't prevent using them in another environment.

> It's worth noting that there is almost NO secondary market in EMC
> equipment; if you didn't buy it from EMC, they won't support it!

Why would EMC support its disks in a SB1000?

--
Daniel

In comp.sys.sun.hardware Daniel Rock <v200739@deadcafe.de> wrote:
> In comp.sys.sun.admin Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88@comcast.net> wrote:
>> If EMC thinks they are defective they MIGHT be OK.
>
> I know. That's why I put them into the SB1000. We have a policy of not
> giving back failed disks. Instead we keep them and physically destroy
> them from time to time.
>
> 90% of the "failed" EMC disks are indeed Ok. They may have spin-up problems
> or a few entries in the grown defect list. But basically they are Ok.

I'd say a disk that doesn't always spin up correctly is not a good place
to store data.

According to Huge <huge@huge.org.uk>:

[ ... ]

> So I contacted the supplier, who was absolutely brilliant throughout, and he
> sent me another 73Gb disk. This is where it gets relevant to you. The original
> disks were Sun badged ones. The replacement disk was a Fujitsu one. The original
> disk was c1t1d0, the new one came up as c1t33d0, and I *could* *not* make its
> logical ID correct (and no-one responded when I posted here asking for help -
> not to worry, I learned loads about luxadm, OBP, FC-AL disks and so on). I
> decided to press ahead regardless and run the machine with c1t33d0 and c1t2d0,
> but first I ran a surface analysis on the new disk. Hundreds of errors, where it
> said that the error was repairable, but was unable to determine the block ID to
> repair it.

Hmm ... that may be because the new disk had a different WWN
(World Wide Number) which makes all FC-AL disks unique, and Solaris had
already allocated c1t1d0 to another WWN. The way to fix that is to run
devfsadm with the -C (cleanup) option, so it removes the data about the
old WWN and frees c1t1d0 for the new one.

Perhaps the reason that things worked as desired with the third
disk is that you had done a fresh install of Solaris on c1t2d0 while
there was no disk in the c1t1d0 slot.

An interesting thing, BTW, The Sun Fire 280R (which I have) uses
the same system board, but a slightly different drive cage, and it
assigns c1t0d0 and c1t1d0 instead of the c1t1d0 and c1t2d0 which the Sun
Blade 2000 does. Another difference is that the Sun Fire 280's drive
cage will only accept 1" high drives, while the Sun Blade 2000's drive
cage will accept 1.6" high drives.

> I contacted the supplier again, and he sent me another new disk, only this time
> another Sun badged one, identical to the original. This came up as c1t1d0
> immediately, surface analysis ran fine, so I installed it. By this time, I'd
> reinstalled everything (again) on c1t2d0,

With nothing in the c1t1d0 slot? So Solaris was able to start
from scratch, with no WWN conflicts.

> so I just made c1t1d0 the mirror. It's
> been absolutely fine for about 10 days now. (I do need to swap the boot disk
> back to c1t1d0, I suppose).
>
> So ... my conclusion? I'd be inclined to think that the SB2000 *is* picky about
> disks, and if I ever need to fit another, I shall be choosy about what I buy.
> Would I ever buy another machine with FC-AL disks? Probably not.

My Sun Fire 280R came with no disks, and I bought a pair of 146
GB drives (non Sun) and both work with no problems. Before I knew that
the Sun Fire 280R would not accept the 1.6" high drives, I had gotten a
pair of them (at about 180 GB) from eBay -- and I was able to test them
in a friend's Sun Blade 2000, and they just would not work at all. The
vendor took them back, since he had not been able to test them either.

> Oh, and "Dear Mr. Sun", what's the point in fitting hot swappable disks to a
> machine with a power supply interlock on its access panel, so you can't open it
> up "hot" to swap the disks anyway?

Because the same system board goes in the Sun Fire 280R, which
has both (1") drives, and both hot-swap power supplies changeable from
the front panel with no interlocks. I guess that they figure that if
you don't need the hot swappable power supplies, you also don't need hot
swapable disks. :-)

When you *do* hot swap them in the Sun Fire 280R, you do have to
umount them anyway, which may require rebooting onto another drive.

I have a card cage for a Sun Blade 2000 which I plan to set up
for making duplicate drives for backups using the external FC-AL
connector.

And I did not answer the original questions probably because I
did not have the Sun Fire 280R yet and thus had no experience with the
FC-AL disks.

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2007-09-27, Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88@comcast.net> wrote:
> Huge wrote:


>> So ... my conclusion? I'd be inclined to think that the SB2000 *is* picky about
>> disks, and if I ever need to fit another, I shall be choosy about what I buy.
>> Would I ever buy another machine with FC-AL disks? Probably not.
>>
>> Oh, and "Dear Mr. Sun", what's the point in fitting hot swappable disks to a
>> machine with a power supply interlock on its access panel, so you can't open it
>> up "hot" to swap the disks anyway?
>>
>>
>
> Just guessing but it might have something to do with buying disks in
> quantity and/or not needing to stock hundreds of different replacement
> disks.

It was a rhetorical question... )


--
"Religion poisons everything."
[email me at huge {at} huge (dot) org <dot> uk]

In comp.sys.sun.admin Cydrome Leader <presence@mungepanix.com> wrote:
> I'd say a disk that doesn't always spin up correctly is not a good place
> to store data.

So don't let it spin down.

The disk is in a workstation. If one fails the mirror is still Ok. If both
fail, I can restore the data from the backup.

--
Daniel

On 2007-09-28, DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:
> According to Huge <huge@huge.org.uk>:
>

[snippage]

>> but first I ran a surface analysis on the new disk. Hundreds of errors, where it
>> said that the error was repairable, but was unable to determine the block ID to
>> repair it.
>
> Hmm ... that may be because the new disk had a different WWN
> (World Wide Number) which makes all FC-AL disks unique, and Solaris had
> already allocated c1t1d0 to another WWN. The way to fix that is to run
> devfsadm with the -C (cleanup) option, so it removes the data about the
> old WWN and frees c1t1d0 for the new one.
>
> Perhaps the reason that things worked as desired with the third
> disk is that you had done a fresh install of Solaris on c1t2d0 while
> there was no disk in the c1t1d0 slot.

This was happening even when booting from the install media, which builds its
device tree from scratch each time.

>> Oh, and "Dear Mr. Sun", what's the point in fitting hot swappable disks to a
>> machine with a power supply interlock on its access panel, so you can't open it
>> up "hot" to swap the disks anyway?
>
> Because the same system board goes in the Sun Fire 280R, which
> has both (1") drives, and both hot-swap power supplies changeable from
> the front panel with no interlocks. I guess that they figure that if
> you don't need the hot swappable power supplies, you also don't need hot
> swapable disks. :-)

Ahhh, that makes sense. Although 30 seconds with some Scotch tape sorted out the
interlock.

> When you *do* hot swap them in the Sun Fire 280R, you do have to
> umount them anyway, which may require rebooting onto another drive.

In theory you can metadetach, then luxadm {remove - whatever the comnand is} the
drive on the SB2K, except you can't open the box! )

> And I did not answer the original questions probably because I
> did not have the Sun Fire 280R yet and thus had no experience with the
> FC-AL disks.




--
"Religion poisons everything."
[email me at huge {at} huge (dot) org <dot> uk]

Huge wrote:

>>> Oh, and "Dear Mr. Sun", what's the point in fitting hot swappable disks to a
>>> machine with a power supply interlock on its access panel, so you can't open it
>>> up "hot" to swap the disks anyway?
>> Because the same system board goes in the Sun Fire 280R, which
>> has both (1") drives, and both hot-swap power supplies changeable from
>> the front panel with no interlocks. I guess that they figure that if
>> you don't need the hot swappable power supplies, you also don't need hot
>> swapable disks. :-)
>
> Ahhh, that makes sense. Although 30 seconds with some Scotch tape sorted out the
> interlock.

Personally, given the Blade 2000 is not designed for hot swapping of
disks, I suspect it could be risky to swap them. I would suspect both
the disk and where it plugs must both be designed to allow hot-swap. It
seems unlikely Sun would have designed the Blade 2000 to be
hot-swappable, then put an interlock on it.

Of course, it may be that the disk just connects to a standard SCSI
chip, and that takes care of it all. But unless I knew that to be the
case, I personally would not risk it.

On 2007-09-28, Dave <sorry-no-email@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Huge wrote:
>
>>>> Oh, and "Dear Mr. Sun", what's the point in fitting hot swappable disks to a
>>>> machine with a power supply interlock on its access panel, so you can't open it
>>>> up "hot" to swap the disks anyway?
>>> Because the same system board goes in the Sun Fire 280R, which
>>> has both (1") drives, and both hot-swap power supplies changeable from
>>> the front panel with no interlocks. I guess that they figure that if
>>> you don't need the hot swappable power supplies, you also don't need hot
>>> swapable disks. :-)
>>
>> Ahhh, that makes sense. Although 30 seconds with some Scotch tape sorted out the
>> interlock.
>
> Personally, given the Blade 2000 is not designed for hot swapping of
> disks, I suspect it could be risky to swap them. I would suspect both
> the disk and where it plugs must both be designed to allow hot-swap. It
> seems unlikely Sun would have designed the Blade 2000 to be
> hot-swappable, then put an interlock on it.

Oh, I think you underestimate the stupidity of the Health and Safety fascists.


--
"Religion poisons everything."
[email me at huge {at} huge (dot) org <dot> uk]