Like a lot of other companies, when we first started the “Virtualization Revolution”, the HP Lefthand Starter SAN solution was a cost effective viable option to begin life in the brave new frontier. As these devices have run well, many have forgotten that the G1 and G2 versions have become end of life. AS with any electronics, the second you can’t get it under warranty, parts break.
Recently we had an issue where we noticed our read/write speeds were extremely slow in our storage environment. All of our firmware was up to date and we had in the past upgraded to larger and faster drives, so we somewhat perplexed. After several throughput tests to verify the symptoms we were seeing, we decided to crack the case and take a look.
The first sign something was wrong was the fact that the cover would not remove easily. Once we did get the cover off we found our culprit. The battery cache for the raid controller had expanded, bulged and was all together bad. We outsourced some new battery caches from ebay ( end of life remember) and not only did our throughput speeds normalize, we could fit the cover on again.
Two lessons learned, one, always double check you physical equipment. Two, devices go end of life for a reason, don’t ignore the upgrade now as it could result in costly downtime in the future.
Myke Schwartz, PEI
