[Info-vax] Problems configuring SA-controller

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2021-03-15 14:21:49 +0000, Joukj said:

> Joukj wrote:
> 
> When rebooting I noticed the message:
> 
> HP Smart Array 6400-128 Controller       (version 2.84)  0 Logical Drives
> 1785-Drive Array Not Configured
>       Configuration information indicates drives were configured on a 
> controller
>       with a newer firmware version.  To avoid data loss, reattach drives to
>       original controller or upgrade controller firmware using Options ROMPaq.
> 
> which is strange since as far as I now version 2.84 is the last 
> formware for this device.
> 
> Pressing F8 did not get me into the controller, so I tried MSA$UTIL 
> again. But now I tried to use an unit-number (in my case 7) which I 
> never used on this device and that worked.
> 
> Can someone explain what might be going on here?

Hard disk drive RAID sets connected to RAID controllers in the Smart 
Array family can be transported in their entirety across different 
Smart Array controllers.

Which is one of the better and lesser-known features of this series of 
RAID controllers, though then-HP did advertise the feature.

HP offered a plethora of Windows controller variants and firmware 
revisions, and far fewer OpenVMS variants and revisions.

As for this case, who knows the history of how these disks got here? Or 
the RAID controllers and firmware revisions that were used?

If you don't care what's presently on the hard disk storage, erase and 
reset it all.

And one mistake I've made with the F-keys at console startup, those are 
the PC F-keys and not the OpenVMS F-keys. There's a list of LK keyboard 
control chords around for some of these option ROM / console firmware / 
console keyboard differences, but I don't recall whether that was 
possible with the Smart Array series as I usually scrounge and swap in 
a PC keyboard for the duration of the reconfiguration as I've had 
trouble with the LK control chords support.


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