Isilon Drive firmware upgrade

And i love this photo :-D


Well i recently performed a Drive firmware upgrade for one of our Isilon cluster and below are the steps.

Procedure for Isilon Drive Firmware Upgrade:

1. Download the package from support.emc.com link

2. Copy the package to Install directory of the cluster, example:

<cluster>:/ifs/data/2015/upgrade/software

3. Disable the notifications:

a.  isi services -a celog_notification disable

b.  isi services -a supportiq disable

4. Install the package (once per cluster)
       Command: isi pkg install /ifs/data/2015/upgrade/software/<package_name.tar>

5. Flush the cache and reboot each node; normally prefer doing it in a bottom-up fashion

a.     Run  isi_flush step prior rebooting each node.

b.     After this comand runs, it will reboot the node.

                                                   i.   isi_disk_firmware_reboot –p

6. After the node comes back online, verify the firmware status on that node

                  i. isi devices

                 ii. isi_disk_firmware_reboot -p

Note: if all drives have been updated then the message "no disks needs firmware update" will be displayed

7. Repeat step 5 & 6 for the rest of the nodes in the cluster

8. Clear the alerts with command

a.  isi events quiet all

b.     isi events cancel all

9.  Enable the notifications with commands:

a.  isi services -a celog_notification enable

b.     isi services -a supportiq enable     

Happy Learning!

SyncIQ Failover and Failback

SyncIq automated data failover & failback provides the high availability to OneFS which means in the event that a primary culster becomes unavailable, SyncIQ provides the ability to failover to a mirrored, DR cluster with minimal interruption.

Please note that: SyncIQ follows asynchronous replication not synchronous.

Below are the steps that needs to be executed for Isilon SyncIQ failover and failback; this can also be used for DR testing.

To initiate failover:

1) Set the target cluster as read-write

# isi sync recovery allow-write <policy_name>

Failback can be accomplished if the policy meets the following criteria:

1) source directory is not a smartlock directory

2) The policy has been failed over

3) The policy is a Sync Policy and not a copy policy

Steps in failback:

1) Resync-prep on the policy

# isi sync recovery resync-prep <policy_name>

2) Run a typical job on the mirror policy, a final failback differential sync is preformed:

# isi sync job start <policy_name_mirror>

3) Change the mirror local target to allow writes

# isi sync recovery allow-write <policy_name_mirror>

4) Run Resync-prep again on the mirror policy

# isi sync recovery resync-prep <policy_name_mirror>

5) Delete the mirror policy

# isi sync policies delete <policy_name_mirror>

Also read Isilon SyncIQ

Happy Learning!

Object Storage for dummies

Cisco Vs Broacde SAN Switch

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Cisco UCS Boot from SAN config

Shutdown procedure of Isilon cluster via CLI

Below is the process of shutting down the EMC Isilon cluster via CLI

Step 1: Ensure there is no read/write operation on the cluster. You can do this by checking the smb/nfs sessions and ask the user to close the session:

# isi smb sessions list
# isi nfs nlm locks list


Step 2: Check the status of the client facing protocols running on the cluster and disable them:

# isi services apache2
# isi services isi_hdfs_d
# isi services isi_iscsi_d
# isi services ndmpd
# isi services nfs
# isi services smb
# isi services vsftpd

Now disable the services that are running

# isi services -a <service name> disable

Step 3: Flush the node journal to file system

# isi_for_array -s isi_flush

Note: Run the command once again if any node fails to flush the journal.

Step 4: Shutdown each on sequentially and don't run 'isi_for_array shutdown -p'

a) Connect to node and run command

# isi config
>> shutdown

Watch the console and ensure that the node is shutdown properly

Not: If you wish to shutdown all nodes simultaneously then run command:

# isi config
>>> shutdown all

Step 5: Once you power up the nodes, run the below command to check the status:

# isi status -q

Step 6: Enable all the services that you disabled in step 2

isi services apache2 enable
isi services isi_hdfs_d enable
isi services isi_iscsi_d enable
isi services ndmpd enable
isi services nfs enable
isi services smb enable
isi services vsftpd enable

Step 7: Verify client are able to connect to cluster and able to perform operation as usually.


Happy Learning!