TA-847: Loss of System Access Issue in Intel® Entry Storage System SS4000-E or SS4000-ENA

Documentation

Maintenance & Performance

000007512

09/01/2017

Technical Advisory 847 (PDF) icon
An issue has been reported where customers can no longer access data shares on the Intel® Entry Storage System SS4000-E or SS4000-ENA. This affects all current production firmware revisions: 1.0 (fs-bc-1.0-20060207), 1.1 (BCFv11b214), and 1.2 (BCFv12b522). This may manifest itself in one of several ways. Some of the observed behavior patterns are:

  1. The system no longer shows the share folders created in the web interface.
  2. The system is not responsive to attempts to access the login page.
  3. When attempting to access the login page, the initialization page is presented.
  4. The system may not respond to a “ping” issued from a client on the same network.


What is the cause?
The root cause has been determined to be corruption of files in the root file system during a system shutdown. The cause of the corruption is due to outstanding I/Os not completing prior to the power off command being issued. Data gathered shows no corruption of the user data on the system. The corruption of files in the root file system results in users not being able to access their data.


How to solve
A workaround is to not power off the storage system or take any action that may result in a power cycle operation, such as upgrading the firmware. If you log on to the web interface and the initialization page is presented, DO NOT continue with the initialization.

If a loss of system access issue occurs due to disk hardware issues, or firmware that has not been updated per this technical advisory, Intel is making a loss of system access recovery script and recovery script use instructions available to support customers and end users.

This recovery software is provided royalty free “AS IS” with no warranty whatsoever, including any warranty of merchantability, fitness for any particular purpose, or any warranty otherwise arising out of any proposal, specification, or sample; it is strictly for the convenience of Intel customers. Customers use this script at their own risk. Intel will provide no support for script use. Intel provides no guarantee that executing the script will result in data recovery.

A more robust shutdown procedure has been implemented in firmware. This new version of the firmware has been through testing that simulated 3 years of shutdown operations without a failure. Systems should be upgraded to this new release of firmware, release 1.3 (BCFv13b524). The new version of the firmware can be downloaded from Intel Download Center by searching for SS4000-E in the search box.

 

File name: TA8471BC.pdf
Size: 20.23 KB
Date: November 2006

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