NetApp Clustered ONTap broken disk label

I recently installed a new Clustered ONTap 8.2 config that is replacing an existing 3210 7-Mode stack.  This configuration required some swing gear and a bit of shuffling of data to get right in the end.  I always told my mom that those hours of Tetris would pay off in the end.

With the swing gear, I ran into a couple of hiccups I had not seen in a while and had forgotten how to resolve.  I decided to blog here for my own record, and if it helps someone else out great.

The first issue I ran into was bad disk labels.  I had seen this particular issue when adding a new stack to my lab NetApp after upgrading to CDot 8.1.  The disk labels were for a 7-mode config, and though I removed ownership of the disks prior to evacuating them from the previous system, the disks showed up as 'Broken'.

Fortunately, the fix is pretty straight forward.

First I needed to drop into the node shell




I can then run the following 7-mode commands:

  disk assign <diskid>
  priv set diag
  labelmaint isolate <diskid>
  label wipe <diskid>
  label wipev1 <diskid>
  label makespare <diskid>
  labelmaint unisolate
  priv set

I was unable to find a way to wildcard this process, so unfortunately it was a laborious process, but in the end it got the job done.

Unfortunately, we are not able to accept your session proposal

Back in 2008 I was fortunate enough to present at VMworld, and it was a fun experience to contribute to what I considered at the time to be the premier IT conference.  Years later VMworld has only grown in popularity and with a record number of submissions, I knew my odds were long. Still, I was disappointed today to learn that my VMworld 2012 abstracts did not receive enough votes to make the cut.  

With literally thousands of submissions, and the final voting left to the popular vote, it appears that my submissions were far too far down the long list of great content to garner the necessary attention.   I’ll give it a try again next year and hopefully make the grade.

Congratulations to all those who will be contributing to this years event!!

The effect of 9/11 on BC/DR

It never ceases to amaze me how many of my Business Continuance discussions with customers still reference experiences, both successes and failures, during the 9/11 tragedy.  It goes without saying that this event more than any other in recent history touched every industry, and everyone in the US and around the world.  It seems that prior to 9/11 the concept of an entire datacenter loss was deemed much more hypothetical than realistic.   Now when discussing BC/DR, a single direct event can be tied to disaster planning ROI.   

Though the occasional Hurricane Katrina and even Hurricane Andrew of the early 90’s come up, and as tragic as those events were in their own right,  I think the national emotional toll in addition to the actual data ramifications puts 9/11 experiences on a tier of their own.