I flashed my DS4700 with a 7 series firmware, now my DS4300 cannot read the disks I moved to that lo
- by Daniel Hoeving
In preparation for adding a number of 1Tb SATA disks to our DS4700 I flashed the controller firmware from a 6 series (which only supports up to 2Tb logical drives) to a 7 series (which supports larger than 2Tb logical drives). Attached to this DS4700 was a EXP710 expansion drawer that we had planned to migrate out to our co-location to allieviate the storage issues we were having there. Unfortunately these two projects were planned in isolation to one another so I was at the time unaware of the issue that this would cause. Prior to migrating the drawer I was reading the "IBM TotalStorage DS4000 EXP700 and EXP710 Storage Expansion EnclosuresInstallation, User’s, and Maintenance Guide" and discovered this:
Controller firmware 6.xx or earlier has a different metadata (DACstore) data
structure than controller firmware 7.xx.xx.xx. Metadata consists of the array and
logical drive configuration data. These two metadata data structures are not
interchangeable. When powered up and in Optimal state, the storage subsystem
with controller firmware level 7.xx.xx.xx can convert the metadata from the drives
configured in storage subsystems with controller firmware level 6.xx or earlier to
controller firmware level 7.xx.xx.xx metadata data structure. However, the storage
subsystem with controller firmware level 6.xx or earlier cannot read the metadata
from the drives configured in storage subsystems with controller firmware level
7.xx.xx.xx or later.
I had assumed that if I deleted the logical drives and array information on the EXP710 prior to migrating it to the DS4300 (6.60.22 firmware) this would satisfy the above, unfortunately I was wrong.
So my question is a) Is it possible to restore the DAC information to its factory settings, b) What tool(s) would I use to accomplish this, or c) is this a lost cause?
Daniel.
