SUN StorageTek 9990V Hard Drive Replacement Procedure

SUN StorageTeK 9990V, like HP XP20000/24000, is an OEM product from Hitachi, equivalent to the HDS USP series. OEM, simply put, means rebranding for sale. You build the product, I slap my own trademark on it, and resell it to customers. Baidu Baike says OEM is commonly known as contract manufacturing, and that captures the meaning well enough (the gist is that the brand owner doesn't produce the product directly; instead, they leverage their core technology to design and develop new products and control sales channels, while outsourcing the actual manufacturing work to other factories of the same type via contracts). In my humble opinion, that definition only applies to contract manufacturing in the narrow sense. Take the iPhone 6s as an example: it is "contract manufactured" by Foxconn, but the core technology is still in Apple's hands. SUN StorageTek 9990V, on the other hand, is an "OEM" of HDS's product, and the core technology actually belongs to Hitachi. The difference is that the former is "selling the act, not the body", while the latter is "selling the body, not the act". Just laugh it off; take it seriously and you lose.

1. About SVP

Purpose: Manages HDS USP storage.

Modes: Read-only mode (View Mode), modify mode (Modify Mode).

Switching modes: Click with the mouse.

Menu descriptions:

• Maintenance — the maintenance interface. A flashing icon for a component indicates a fault with that component.
• Information — collect logs. Use this to look up the specific cause of a fault and understand the component's damage.

After a fault is resolved, you should "Complete (Complete SIM)" the related log entries; otherwise the Message light will not turn off automatically.

2. Maintenance Notes for HDS High-End Equipment (vs. Mid-Range)

1. Failed spare parts usually do not automatically show a red light (except for disks).
2. There is no IE-based graphical interface.
3. Faulty parts cannot be hot-swapped directly; you must go through SVP commands and follow the SVP prompts for replacement.
4. Do not insert or remove storage components or internal cables without going through SVP.
5. The Message light being on usually indicates that fault information is present.

3. Disk Replacement Steps

1. Go to the Maintenance menu, click the icon for the disk to be replaced (it will be flashing), and the following dialog appears:

   (The image has been lost; cannot be retrieved.)

   In the dialog, "Device Status" is "Failed", and the disk belongs to the spare pool.

   Click Replace, then choose Replace (not Replace INLINE) from the dropdown. A prompt appears: "Are you sure you want to replace the physical device?"

   Click Yes. Messages like "Blocking the Physical device" and "Spin down the Physical device" appear, followed by: "The LDE of some disk might be on. Please check the location of the disk drive that you want to replace. After that, please replace the disk drive and then select OK." This means that when this message appears, the indicator light on a disk drive will stay on (usually red, flashing red when idle). After confirming that the drive with the steady light is the one you want to replace, swap in the spare, then click OK.

   As for the actual physical replacement, it's just "pull out" and "push in". Aside from making sure the disk handle is fully open when you push the new disk in, the rest is trivial—click OK when done. A message then appears: "Please insert a dump FD and select [OK]. If you don't have any dump FD, please select [cancel]." This means: if you want to copy the disk drive error information to a floppy, insert one; otherwise, click Cancel to proceed. In my case, the disk I replaced happened to be a spare, so I clicked Cancel and the replacement finished directly. If the disk is not a spare, you will be prompted to click OK to copy data to the spare. Specifically: "Are you sure you want to copy data in spare device to the physical device?", "After data is copied to the spare device, copy-back will be performed.", and "Copying data in spare device to the physical device has been started." This means: do you want to restore the previously used spare disk back to spare status? If yes, after the data recovery fully completes, the data will be copied back. Click OK on all three of those pop-ups. After replacement, the disk status should be "Normal"; if it's a spare, the status will be "Free".

   As mentioned at the beginning, after finishing the procedure you must manually "Complete" the error log entries to clear the alarm light. Click Information → Log... → SIM → List... in turn, select the relevant error log entry, click Complete, and confirm with "This will complete the specified SIM." by choosing Yes—the log entry's status will then show as "Completed". Finally, remember to switch the mode back to "View Mode". That's the whole procedure.

Note: All of the above operations are performed in Modify Mode.