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sohtnax

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Format EMC FC4700 Drives

How can I format the drives of an EMC FC4700 wihtout access to Navisphere or the SP's, which appear to be shot.   I need to ship these drives out, but need to be 100% there is no data on them.
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Duncan Meyers
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sohtnax

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I can't connect to the SP's.  Tried a crossover and ran a port scanner, but could not access by IP or find the correct IP for that matter.   When I look at each SP via the keyboard/mouse and monitor hookup, one of them can only get into BIOS and the other sits at a Windows Blue screen with the OS info.
The SP that has the Windows blue screen is behaving itself - that is normal behaviour for an FC4700 SP. The other SP, however, sounds a bit sick.

All EMC boxes were shipped with a serial cable (black, about 6m long). Connect it to the serial port on SPA on the FC4700, then create a PPP connection on your laptop:  run the New Connection Wizard, select Set Up an Advanced Connection, Select Connect Directly to another computer, select Guest, select COM1, select Anyone's use or My use - whatever suits you. Click Finish. Open the connection you've just created, select Properties, under General, select the Configure button for COM1, set for 115200 baud, 8 bit, no parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control. Click OK. The username for the connection is clariion, password is clariion! (note! username and password are case sensitive). your laptop will establish a connection with the SP. You can now open a web browser and point it to http://192.168.1.1/setup - this gets you to the screen where you can set up the management IP addresses of the CLARiiON. Set as follows: set the IP address of SPA first, and set the peer IP address to the address of SPB. When you apply the setting the SP will reboot (good 'ole NT!). Go into SPB and set its IP address, but the peer IP address will be that of SPA. Note also that the SP names have to be unique, but they can be anything you like. SPB will now reboot. You then have to go back into SPA and scroll down to the "Restart Management Server" button. Click that. You should now be able to point a web browser to the IP address that you set for SPA and you should now be able to manage the array.

I suspect that one SP will respond and one won't. Unscrew the thumb screws on each side of the SP that is showing the BIOS screen, pull it out a couple of inches and push it back in. This will force it to reboot. Keep an eye on the green and amber LED on the panel of SP -the green LED will flash rapidly, then slowly, then eventually (around 6 to 7 minutes) it will be turned on. If the amber LED lights then the SP has a problem.  Note that you only need one working SP to manage the system - and to scrub the discs, so as long as you can get into the FC4700, then you'll be able to do things with it even if it is only on one SP.

Let me know how you go...
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ASKER

Thanks for the detailed reply&much appreciated!  I was able to connect to one of the SP's but ran into some other hurdles preventing me from actually destroying the data.

I was able to connect to one of the SP's using a standard serial cable and access http://192.168.1.1/setup.  However, this brings me to a page that states the following:  "Storage Processor PSM Creation    -     The storage system does currently not have a PSM LUN.  The PSM LUN must be created now before any other configuration operation.  Enter the following date for the PSM Lun:"

Thereafter, I am given an option to select the RAID Level for the PSM LUN from a drop-down.  My options are RADI1, 3, 5, and 1/0 and there are 9 disk that I can check off.  When I select an option, for example, RAID 5 with disks 0 through 5 checked off, and click on "CREATE PSM"  I am redirected to http://192.168.1.1/setup/createpsm where I get a page cannot be displayed message.  I have tried every possible combination, but keep getting the same result.

If I browse directly to http://192.168.1.1, I see the Navisphere splash screen, and once the applet loads, the following error appears:   "Error:  Domain Configuration  -   User Account information defined for this node is inconsistent with the rest of the domain.  Please restart the ManagementServer on this node to resolve the inconsistency".  When I click on OK, I am not able to see the storage device or any info from Navisphere.  It's as if its not connected to anything.  In the monitor section I did however see an IP that I believe was the old address of one of the SP's and beneath it, it showed what I believe is that Clariion ID, F20011400383.   I browsed to the IP address shown in monitor, however I get the same error message regarding the Domain Configuration.

I tried connecting to the other SP, but keep getting Error 777 when trying to connect.  I re-seated the SP as per your instructions, but still no luck.

Any ideas as to how I can work around the PSM or Domain Config errors on the SP that is allowing me to connect?
Sounds like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place...

Try creating the PSM on all 9 discs if you select RAID 5, or select RAID 1 on disk 8 and 9 only. Having said that, the CLARiiON may be refusing to create the PSM because you've got an SP that won't boot. The domain config errors relate to the absent PSM. The PSM LUN contains all the configuration information for the array. PSM stands for Persistent Storage Management. It gets written to whenever the arrays configuration changes, and it is the mechanism that keeps the two SPs in sync.

If you cannot create the PSM then the array is unusable, so you'll either have to get the dead SP replaced, or engage EMC to do the data destruction for you. It will probably be cheaper to get EMC to do the work for you. Alternatively, remove each disc and physically destroy it. The FC4700 is now four generations old and hardware and software support was stopped some time ago. I'd suggest that the array is virtually worthless on the second-hand market, except in rare instances as spare parts.  Having said that, I've found quite a few on eBay - although $16K is simply ridiculous as a brand-new system with better performance is cheaper! Other prices of $400 are more realistic...
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Since these drives were originally in RAID5 sets, if I remove them form the array individually, will their be data accesible from the drive?

This SAN w/ drives are being shipped to another division and I need to be sure they won't be able to read the data.
The data won't be accessible to people without special tools. A data recovery house would be able to recover the data, but another division of your company won't - unless they pay someone like Kroll Ontrack to recover the data for them.

In short, if your confident that the other division isn't going to strip the discs out and send them to a data recovery house before re-using the array, I wouldn't get too worried about the data as they won't be able to recover data. If the array is going to be stripped for parts and/or sold outside your organisation, then you should either engage EMC to erase the data on the discs or simply destroy the discs.

Finally - the FC4700 is well and truly broken - you'll need a new SP to get it working again...
Hi sohtnax!

Any news on your FC4700? Is there anything else I can help with?
Points please!
Forced accept.

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