Dell Compellent SC4020 License recover

Well,

Dell offer DIP (Data Inplace Upgrades) for SC4020 where a customer can bought a SC5020 and move the existing license from the old to the new one including controller numbers.  Also as part of the origin Compellent story was that the license is not "bind" to the hardware directly and a customer can buy new or upgrading HW and took the license to the new systems.

Our 4020 licenses comes by E-Mail and different versions existing depending if it was a pre or post 6.7 SCOS for example. The later ones combined controller and service tag together within the license. For a period of time the license was available in the partner compellent portal as well. Today this is managed trough the dell digital locker.  You should call Dell or get in contact with the seller.

Also.. the 4020 is not user installable and as a trained and certify people i find it as not so easy.

Regards,
Joerg

Hello, 

I use this device for my home lab, and it is factory reset before delivered so all that I need is setup it again, I know that it shoud be installed by a trained and certify people, but for my personal purpose I think that I can try. I contacted my seller but he dont know about that.
May I know how to get the license from Dell digital locker?
Regards,

Peter

You logged into the account the SC was registered once.

Get in contact with Dell. For identify a SC you need the Controller ID or the Stag. First one is gone with the reset and our 4020 havent a stamped Stag or sticker. So take a look to you chassis.

Regards,
Joerg

Unfortunately, I do not have any information about the original receipt of that SC, there no way to access the SC was registered. I had request for changing ownership and still wait for allowed from Dell.

Ok, but again. It might be possible that the license and features are already transferred to another system and you become the owner of a piece of metall.

Regards,
Joerg

In that case, it is a relly bad news to me!  does moderator can help me to check the status of that license?

Hello Paperknight,

As Orign3K stated that if the previous owner didn’t provide the license then in most cases the system was upgraded & the license moved to the new system.  I will send you a private message and if you can send me the controller serial # I can look into the license & see if it was transferred or not.  When you do the transfer ownership it can take up to 15 business days to complete.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

When we do a factory reset which is also mandatory if you fully follow the instruction of a DataInplaceUpgrade or other kind of migration the HSN/SSN is removed from the system and i believe that it canot recover in a easy way from a customer perspective.

IIRC and old 4020 doesnt have a sticker at the outside with the Service tag. The Stag is only "viewable" when the unit is up and running and finished the setup. So its a chicken and egg problem and only support can tell you is there is a command to view the information when connected trough RS232 serial line.

Old 4020's, where a customer never applied updates Dell Support have serious problem with a provided STAG because in old Support Assists reports it looks like that the STAG was not submitted. Sounds weird but that was the story from last week with a system and SCOS 6.6.  From the beginning a SC is more identifyed by the Controller IDs rather than the STAG.

Regards,
Joerg

Any news?

Hi, I have the exact same problem. SC4020 bought from eBay for my homelab, controller was factory reset, and I don't have a license file. I'm stuck in the Storage Center Initial Configuration in the Submit Storage Center License step. 

There is no way to make contact with the previous owner (eBay seller got the item from a decomissioned site).

Is there a way to jump over this step, or retreive the original license file?

Regards,

CG

Hi,

There are various users did mention if there is way to obtain the license file. Most of the comments stated that to contact the support line to obtain the file, as each storage do not have a general file to use. It is tied with the chassis tag and serial. The original file should be kept by the owner, but unfortunately you are not able to contact the owner. More over, most files are kept in Dell Digital Locker, I doubt if you log in to your locker, the file would be there are the ownership is not transferred. Hence, it is best to contact the support line. 

Hi Joey,

Thank you for your reply. Fortunately I only reset one controller, the other one can be accessed. However, it didn't boot up, it stays in a loop saying "all essential disks are missing". That's why I needed to factory reset in the first place.

So if I could retrieve the license from the second controller, that would be great. There are some CLI commands that I've tried related to the license (can't remeber them, based "mc" or "platform"?), but obviously I didn't manage anything.

The Digital Locker is empty, as you suspected. I'll try the support line, but the device is out of warranty for more than a year. Do you think they'll help in this instance? Is there anything else that I could try in order to recover the license file from the 2nd controller?

Best regards,

CG

Hi,

For support offering, there are some support can be provided, but I am unsure if license backup is one of the support can offer without any fee. More over, the support need to remote into the storage to perform the backup of license and reset. For the issue you faced, all essential disks are missing, there are some sets of commands to reset the storage but not the backup. Hence, I suggest best to check with support as they will also need to engage the L2 support for engagement. 

Hi Joey,

So I followed your advice and contacted Dell Support. They couldn't help directly, but they recommended an ownership transfer procedure, which I did. The transfer was approved, which means I should find the license file in the Digital Locker. However, there's nothing there. Does it usually take some time for the license to be transfered as well, or should I open a new ticket? 

Best regards,

CG

Hi,

Unfortunately, we can't manage SC series licenses so I would recommend contacting again support line to getting further information.