Recover data from EQ 6100

Question

I have a EQ PS 6100 with 1 bad controller. It is powered on and connected to a switch. It has no ISCSI connections - we are utilizing another SAN product. I need to access the SAN and view the data on the drives and recover files. I can connect via a serial cable directly to the good controller card and then Putty in. I assume via the command line I can via volumes, etc. but can I view folder/file names? if so, what commands?

I have attempted to attach a laptop to the switch sitting on the iscsi network but have not been successful yet. If I am successful and I launch the iscsi initiator - connect - access disk manager - rescan disks - I assume I will only see drive(s) my initiator has been given access to.

My issue is - I can run the Dell EqualLogic SAN Headquarters app (from a VM server that has access to the SAN) but I cannot launch the Group Manager - I get - Unable to launch group manager - "The request to the group timed out" I also attempted to configure an iscsi initiator connection to the SAN from this VM and it failed.

Can I utilize my direct serial connection to fix this? Fix the launching of the Group Manager and give my initiator client access rights to view the data on the SAN?

Thanks,

Milty

dwilliam62 · Accepted Answer

Hello,

If it is a VMFS Datastore, I don't know of any Windows based software to access it. It might exist but I am not familiar with any. There are projects in Linux to access VMFS Datastores. But then all you see are VMDK "files" not the data in them.

Best option is first DISCONNECT the Windows host from that volume. Before it gets accidentally formatted and potential for data loss is high. Then attach a VMware host to that volume. Change the IP address for access to that ESX host. Then you can read the VMFS data. You can try something like attaching the VMDK(s) to another VM and read the data that way. Or register the VM and attempt to bring it up. You will likely have to tweak the VM network settings to match the ESX host.

This is also outside of the EQL array itself.

Regards,

Don

dwilliam62 · Answer

Hello,

From the CLI you cannot see or access files on the volumes. This is a SAN block device, not a NAS.

At the CLI you can do anything you can do in the Java GUI. Issues with SANHQ launching the Group Manager are usually related to Java.

At the CLI start with:

GrpName> grpparams show
______________________________ Group Information ______________________________
Name: GrpName Group-Ipaddress: 172.16.0.100
Group-Mgmt-Gateway: 192.168.172.1 Def-Snap-Reserve: 0%

Def-Snap-Warn: 10% Def-Snap-Depletion: delete-oldest
Def-Thin-Growth-Warn: 60% Def-Thin-Growth-Max: 100%
DateAndTime: Tue May 3 13:21:53 2022 TimeZone: America/New_York
Description: Production volumes for Def-Iscsi-Prefix:
iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic
Def-Iscsi-Alias: yes Info-Messages: enabled
Webaccess: enabled Webaccess-noencrypt: disabled
Cliaccess-SSH: enabled Cliaccess-Telnet: disabled
Email-Notify: enabled Syslog-Notify: enabled
iSNS-Server-List: Email-List:
NtpServers: Smtp-Server-List: x,x,x,x DNS-Server-List:
DNS-Suffix-List: Syslog-Server-List: .x.x.x.x.x
Target-Auth-UserName: Target-Auth-Password: ********
Email-From:
Location:
Conn-Balancing: enabled Discovery-Use-Chap: enabled
Email-Contact: Perf-balancing: enabled
Disallow-Downgrades: yes Management-Ipaddress: 192.168.172.20

SSH-V1-Protocol: disabled FTP-service: enabled
Standby-Button: disabled Def-DCB-VLAN-Id: 0
Thermal-Shutdown: enabled Crypto-Legacy-Protocols: enabled

In this example, there is an iSCSI discovery address and a Management IP address. Your system may only have one Group IP address. Which means both management and iSCSI are on the same IP subnet.

Make sure you can access both IPs over the network. Make sure you can access all the iSCSI IP ports.

GrpName>show member

That will displays the member(s)

GrpName>member select MEMBERNAME show eths

This will display all the IP addresses on that member.

You should be able to point a web browser to http://IP address/welcome.html NOTE: If you have a Management IP address defined, you have to use that IP address in order to access the JAVA GUI.

Older EQL FW only works with older Java due to changes in JAVA security. So you might need to find an older v1.7 JRE for example.

At the CLI. You can list all the volumes with

GrpName>show volumes

Then you can see what the access list is with

GrpName>volume select VOLUMENAME show access

GrpName>volume select VOLUNAME access create ipaddress X.X.X.X

That will allow that IP address to access that volume.

If you go back to your laptop, make sure you can ping the Group IP address (the iSCSI IP address if out of band management is enabled) Then add the Group IP address to the iSCSI initiator program and do a refresh you should see the volume in the targets list. Then you can use "connect" to log into that volume. It should now show as a drive on that laptop and you can access the files.

I am assuming the laptop OS is compatible with the filesystem on that volume. of course. I.e Windows laptop won't mount a Linux or VMware VMFS datastore without some additional software.

I am guessing this is a MS Windows environment? Also, if the volumes were part of a MS Cluster than MS Cluster server will have to be running on a Windows Server to access a CSV volume.

There are some videos on YouTube on using the GUI and CLI.

If you have trouble connecting make sure you are on the same IP subnet as the iSCSI IP subnet for connection, and if dedicated out-of-band management is enabled you will need to be on that IP subnet for management, SSH login, etc..

If you sent the output of GrpName>show grpparams and GrpName>member select MEMBERNAME show eths (where MEMBERNAME is the name of the physical EQL member. You can get the from GrpName>show member

Regards,

Don

Milty60 · Answer

Appreciate all the info. Will test access later in the week - offsite atm.  Thanks,  Milty

dwilliam62 · Answer

Hello,

You are very welcome. Do let me know how you fair. it's not difficult to manage from the CLI at all.

If you could also run: GrpName>member select MEMBERNAME show That will display more info about the member, including FW version.

Regards,

Don

Milty60 · Answer

I am able to access the volumes and see them in Disk Administrator as Disk 1 but I can not access it in file explorer - I think it is a VMware VMFS datastore. You mentioned additional software may be needed. Please advise.

Thanks,

Milty

Origin3k · Answer

As mentioned before a EQL is a BLOCK Storage which means another Host use it as a drive and place a Filesystem on it. If you have a VMFS you should hook up a ESXi Host. Yes its possible to read a VMFS also from a linux with a user land driver but for me its easier to setup a Host(can be also run inside a VM).

If you already initialized the volume with a Windows host that all your VMFS Metadata is overriden and you will got a hard time to get access again.

Regards,
Joerg

Milty60 · Answer

I am going to power up our old ESXI host - change IP access address and configure for the switch that the SAN sits on. I will then attempt to see/access the data store.  Thanks,  Milty

dwilliam62 · Answer

Hello,

Great! You are very welcome! I hope it goes as expected. I will suggest one thing. Create a snapshot of the volume(s) before you attempt access. Just in case something goes wrong. I.e. you select "format" when adding the old Datastore in vs. resignature. (in case that server has a record of that Datastore. In fact you can use the snapshot to test with instead of the volume itself. I would also suggest putting the base volume offline.

GrpName>volume select VOLUMENAME offline

GrpName>volume select VOLUMENAME snapshot create-now online description "text"

GrpName>volume select esxv65-vol1 snapshot create-now online description "Test snapshot"
Snapshot creation succeeded.
Snapshot name is esxv65-vol1-2022-05-09-08:38:49.297724.1
NDCSUP-Prod>
5916643:2920155:SUP6100E-1:MgmtExec: 9-May-2022 08:38:49.228612:SnapInfo.cc:82:INFO:8.2.4:Successfully created snapshot esxv65-vol1-2022-05-09-08:38:49.297724.1

The snaoshot will inherit the access list from the base volume, so make sure that is set correctly first.

The CLI commands are very consistent so it's pretty easy to figure out how to navigate around. Also a "?" at the end will show options, and "TAB" will complete commands or volume/snapshot names.

Regards,

Don

Then when you rescan the ESX host it will discover the snapshot. You can access it the same as the volume without worrying about the regular volume.

dglushko · Answer

i've used salvagedata before when our ps6100 was down beyond recovery. admins couldnt do anything, few drives were completely down. https://www.salvagedata.com/ is their site

dwilliam62 · Answer

Hello,   Thanks for the info.  In their case they aren't down, they just need to connect to an ESX server so they can read the VMFS filesystem and get their data off of it.     Regards,  Don

dr-kiev · Answer

To access VMFS volumes and open each vmdk VM file under windows you can use Ufs explorer pro, even demo version from sysdevlabs.com

Once you access VMs you can browse and open files. Also, you can use option: mount as ISCSI device from that software, this way internal OS of each VM will be mounted to Windows OS and you see it in disks manager.

EqualLogic

Recover data from EQ 6100

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