[Info-vax] Health monitoring disk members of HW RAID controllers?

[Kari Uusimäki]

On 20.7.2011 19:56, Rod wrote:
> I have been previously using OpenVMS Volume Shadowing (software RAID
> mirroring) with OpenVMS Alpha and OpenVMS/I64.  It was possible to see
> when spindle members of the shadow set were degrading and proactively
> replace disks before it became an emergency repair. (SHO ERR, DECevent
> utility for ERRLOG.SYS content).
>
> I'm now moving towards deploying hardware RAID solutions for the
> enhanced performance they deliver on OpenVMS/Alpha and OpenVMS/I64
> systems.
>
> OpenVMS on IA64 and (some) Alphas supports hardware RAID controllers
> which package and offer RAID arrays as a single homogeneous logical
> volumes thru the OS.
>
> As near as I can tell, this hardware RAID logical volume packaging
> means there is no way to monitor the state of heath of the drive
> spindle members that comprise the RAID array using simple means like
> SHO ERR.
>
> I have also looked at the kind of displays available from the OpenVMS
> RAID controller admin utilities (SYS$SYSTEM:MSA$UTIL for the DS15,
> RX2600 SA640x, SYS$SYSTEM:SAS$UTIL for the RX2660 embedded 8 port SAS
> HBA).
>
> Those utilities don't seem to offer any drive spindle-level detail
> displays that would permit advance alert monitoring for degrading
> spindles.
>
> Can someone offer a suggestion of how an OpenVMS system administrator
> could perform such proactive monitoring with "available" tools that
> execute under OpenVMS?  I would like to avoid services/offerings that
> require close co-ordination with HP service. (I have a large installed
> base of remote customer sites that I administer that span many
> different HP service areas or are maintained by a 3rd party vendor).
> I would also like to avoid offline/firmware-based display capabilities
> as they are difficult to access on 24/7 operated remote site nodes.
>
>


Have you tested the HP SIM (Insight Manager) with the OpenVMS agents? 
AFAIK it should report problems with Raid Adapter disks also.


Kari