September 2, 2008
NOTICE:
THIS FIELD NOTICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS AND DOES NOT IMPLY ANY KIND OF GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY, INCLUDING THE WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY. YOUR USE OF THE INFORMATION ON THE FIELD NOTICE OR MATERIALS LINKED FROM THE FIELD NOTICE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. CISCO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE OR UPDATE THIS FIELD NOTICE AT ANY TIME.
Revision History
Revision Date Comment
Products Affected
Products Affected Comments
Problem Description
An MCS Server listed in the Products Affected section of this field notice with any of the HP Ultra320 SCSI hard drives listed in HP Customer Advisory c00677430 may exhibit reduced performance and/or excessive timeouts. This is caused by the dynamically adjusted seek time profile table in the drive firmware, after it becomes degraded.
There is no risk of data loss associated with this issue; it affects performance only.
Background
Details of this issue are available in HP Customer Advisory c00677430.
This situation is recoverable in the field as highlighted in the Workaround/Solution section.
Replacement of a failed drive with this problem is not necessary and should not be requested.
Problem Symptoms
When this problem occurs, the reduced performance is characterized by occasional brief delays in command response times while servicing random workloads. In severe cases, the drive may exhibit command timeouts, which will require a manual server reboot for recovery.
Workaround/Solution
The workaround to this problem is to reboot the server.
The permanent solution to this problem is to upgrade the Hard Drive firmware. Hard Drive Firmware can only be updated while a drive is running in a server; any spare drives that have the affected firmware must be installed in a server in order to be upgraded. The firmware operates at the hardware level, and it therefore applies to both Windows and Linux based Operating Systems.
Do not use the solution provided by HP in the HP Customer Advisory as doing so would result in an unsupported system. Instead, please follow the directions below:
To Upgrade the Hard Drive Firmware:
1. Go to MCS Server Utilities (registered customers only)
2. Download 2 files:
- HP_SCSI_FW-1.0.1.iso
- HP_SCSI_FW-1.0.1-Readme.txt (The Readme is available after clicking the ISO file link)
Note: These same files are available under similar links for each of the affected servers. However, there is no difference in the files, meaning the above link will work for all affected servers.
3. Burn the HP_SCSI_FW-1.0.1.iso image onto a CD or DVD
4. Review the contents of the Readme and follow the installation instructions.
DDTS
To follow the bug ID link below and see detailed bug information, you must be a registered customer and you must be logged in.
DDTS Description CSCse71185 (registered customers only) Certain HP Ultra320 SCSI HDs May Exhibit Reduced Perf and Timeouts
For More Information
If you require further assistance, or if you have any further questions regarding this field notice, please contact the Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center (TAC) by one of the following methods:
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