EqualLogic woe, again....
There is nothing like doing patching or firmware upgrades to really get those buttocks clenching. After so many that have gone wrong it has become one of those jobs I'd rather go on holiday when they are due and leave to someone else who is younger and more care free and has yet to be scarred.
The latest round of EqualLogic patching at one of our sites went a bit tom tit. Upgrading from 4.3.7 to 5.0.4 should have been a fairly simple thing, though previously I did experience a small problem with one of the controllers restarting about 15 minutes after the upgrade which was a bit weird I wasn't expecting any issues. However this went completely bonkers after the upgrade. Lots of errors which were triggered by cloning a replicated drive. Replicating would start to fail, drives would disappear and then reappear, the only solution that Dell could come up with was to move to version 5.0.5. as 5.0.4.
This was weird as I had been told previously that I should move to 5.0.4 as it was very stable, 2 months later they release 5.0.5 which to me suggests that 5.0.4 might be have a few issues. The whole 5 series firmware has been beset by problems from the start with 5.0.0 and 5.0.1 being pulled due to bugs and users were directed to downgrade back to 4.3.6.
All these firmware revisions do not really add any real functionality, version 5 did bring some better integration with VMware with vStorageAPI support which allows the hardware to do a lot of the work but if you aren't using the functionality why bother?
At least Dell will still provide support even if you are not up to date on the firmware and as I get older the phrase "if it ain't broke don't fix it" starts to ring more true every time.
One other note is if you use the HIT tools and upgrade to 5.0.5 then you will need to ensure the latest ones are installed as only 3.4.2, 3.5.0 and 3.5.1 are supported. Version 4.3.8 supports back as far as 3.1.2.
Read the release notes and compatibility charts or it may go wrong and given the number of problems I see across our 9 P6000 units they really don't need any help.
Just to compare our 4 year old EVA 8000 has never had a problem apart from a few drives failing which is no big deal, but then again the cost of the replication license alone is the same as a 1TB P6500E, I guess you pays your money and makes your choice.
The latest round of EqualLogic patching at one of our sites went a bit tom tit. Upgrading from 4.3.7 to 5.0.4 should have been a fairly simple thing, though previously I did experience a small problem with one of the controllers restarting about 15 minutes after the upgrade which was a bit weird I wasn't expecting any issues. However this went completely bonkers after the upgrade. Lots of errors which were triggered by cloning a replicated drive. Replicating would start to fail, drives would disappear and then reappear, the only solution that Dell could come up with was to move to version 5.0.5. as 5.0.4.
This was weird as I had been told previously that I should move to 5.0.4 as it was very stable, 2 months later they release 5.0.5 which to me suggests that 5.0.4 might be have a few issues. The whole 5 series firmware has been beset by problems from the start with 5.0.0 and 5.0.1 being pulled due to bugs and users were directed to downgrade back to 4.3.6.
All these firmware revisions do not really add any real functionality, version 5 did bring some better integration with VMware with vStorageAPI support which allows the hardware to do a lot of the work but if you aren't using the functionality why bother?
At least Dell will still provide support even if you are not up to date on the firmware and as I get older the phrase "if it ain't broke don't fix it" starts to ring more true every time.
One other note is if you use the HIT tools and upgrade to 5.0.5 then you will need to ensure the latest ones are installed as only 3.4.2, 3.5.0 and 3.5.1 are supported. Version 4.3.8 supports back as far as 3.1.2.
Read the release notes and compatibility charts or it may go wrong and given the number of problems I see across our 9 P6000 units they really don't need any help.
Just to compare our 4 year old EVA 8000 has never had a problem apart from a few drives failing which is no big deal, but then again the cost of the replication license alone is the same as a 1TB P6500E, I guess you pays your money and makes your choice.
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