Getting close to releasing what I believe will be the new standard in storage diagnostics for sysadmins and service people … Let me know what you think!!
The SANtool™ is a multi-platform portable storage diagnostic tool. The SANtool enables the administrator/technician to efficiently diagnose, test, tune, break and/or repair storage peripherals. Unlike traditional software diagnostics there is nothing to license, “install” or remove. Plug the SANtool USB Flash stick into a machine running a supported Windows or UNIX/LINUX operating system, and start using the software. The diagnostics are performed by SANtools® command-line program, (SMARTMon-UX), and controlled via a web browser over a secure (SSL) connection. All HTML, Javascript files, images, the embedded web server, and O/S-specific executables are included on the SANtool. No java runtime, external DLLs, drivers, or web servers are required.
This is picture of the SANtool desktop
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AdminPosts, Diagnostics, Industry News
Disk hacking, Failure analysis
The link to Seagate data recovery services is https://services.seagate.com/online_request_form.aspx. Fill out the form, and they send you information. If you drop the disk drive off to a UPS store, then they pick up the costs so shipping is free (unless you want to overnight it). The two recovery centers in the USA are in Chicago and Santa Clara. The Seagate (US) 24 Hour Critical Response Number is: Read more…
Diagnostics, Disk Drives, Failure Analysis
boot-of-death
Surely this is a temporary thing. The Seagate boot-of-death disk drive identification site worked just fine up till Sunday evening (update … Still offline as of Wed Jan 21st 10:14 PM)
Diagnostics, Disk Drives, Predictive Failure
boot-of-death
In light of the sev-1 Seagate firmware bug that bricks both consumer and enterprise-class SATA disks, I ran the Seagate online tool that tells people if any of my disks are affected by the boot-of-death bug.
- Is my drive destined to become a brick?
Yup, this just isn’t my day. Worse, my affected barracuda drives are running in a Solaris system as part of a zfs-based software RAID file system, and Read more…
Diagnostics, Disk Drives, Predictive Failure
boot-of-death, Failure analysis, Firmware
Seagate hard drives from the Barracuda 7200.11, DiamondMax 22, Barracuda ES.2 SATA, and SV35 families, Seagate FreeAgent® , and Maxtor OneTouch® 4 may become inaccessible when the host system is powered on. In other words, they turn into bricks. If you are unfortunate to have one of these products and have not upgraded the firmware (i.e. if you are unfortunate enough to have one of these products and don’t cruise the Seagate support site on a regular basis), then a firmware bug will instruct the disk to turn itself into a brick some day when you power it up. Do NOT power off any computer that has the following disk drives until you check the firmware. Seagate is quietly offering free disaster recovery assistance, firmware updates, and software to determine if you have a disk that is running the evil firmware. This “boot-of-death” bug rivals the infamous IBM Deathstar which lead to a successful class-action lawsuit. Read more…
Diagnostics, Disk Drives, Predictive Failure
boot-of-death, Failure analysis, Firmware
TapeAlert is the street-name for the ANSI specification that governs hardware diagnostics for tape drives, libraries and autochangers. It was “invented” by HP, and well established as an industry spec. Pretty much everything from IBM half-million dollar robotic systems to consumer-class entry-level DAT drives from HP support the spec. More information on the spec can be found at the TAPEALERT.ORG Read more…
Diagnostics, Tapes/Changers/Libraries
Failure analysis, Predictive Failure, Specifications
Here are some examples of scripts that I have written using the command-line engine in smartmon-ux.
Emulate the typical LED and alarms one would see with a hardware-based RAID controller so an appliance that uses software-based RAID has same look-and feel …
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Diagnostics, Enclosure Management, SES
Enclosure Management, SES
Below is a dump from a DotHill SAF-TE compliant enclosure, using SANtools smartmon-ux software. The text in RED indicates the SAF-TE components. This was run on a Windows-based O/S, but the software is ported to Solaris, LINUX, IRIX, AIX, HP-UX, and other UNIX Variants.
smartmon-ux -I+ -E+ \\.\SCSI3:
SMARTMon-ux [Release 1.13, Build 4-SEP-2002] - Copyright 2002 SANtools, Inc. http://www.SANtools.com
Discovered CNSi JSS122 S/N " " on \\.\SCSI3: (processor) [SAF-TE] [Adapter/ID.LUN=0/0.6]
Inquiry Text Page Data - ANSI defined fields
Device Type: processor
Peripheral Qualifier: Connected to this LUN
Removable Device: NO
ANSI Version: 3 (SPC ANSI X3.301:1997)
ISO/IEC Version: 0
ECMA Version: 0
Vendor Identification: CNSi
Product Identification: JSS122
Firmware Revision: L421
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Diagnostics, Enclosure Management, SAF-TE
Enclosure Management, SAF-TE
SCSI Enclosure Services, referred as SES or SES-2, depending on the revision level, is a command set that is used to manage and sense the state of the power supplies, cooling devices, displays, indicators, individual drives, and other non-SCSI elements installed in a fibre channel or SAS (host-attached) enclosure. Intelligent enclosures that connect to the host via a SCSI cable will normally speak the SAF-TE protocol.
The command set is defined as an ANSI specification, and utilizes the SCSI commands to obtain configuration information for the enclosure as well as reprogram it to light external indicator LEDs or audible alarms to inform the user about the health and maintenance information for attached RAID controllers and disk drives.
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Configuration, Diagnostics, Enclosure Management, Firmware, SES
Enclosure Management, SES
