ME4084 - No dedicated or global spare available message

Question

Hi all,

I'm a little mystified by an informational level message that appears in the eventlog that appears after a global spare is added into a RAID 6 volume to replace a failed disk:

"There is no dedicated or global spare that can be used for reconstructing this disk group. If a disk in the disk group fails, reconstruction cannot start automatically."

The system is an ME4084 with two ME484 expanders and identical 4TB midline SAS disks, configured as 24 x 10 disk RAID 6 pools, single volume per pool, with 12 global spares. There was only a single disk failure across the array, so plenty of global spares free. The pool should be able to cope with two simultaneous failures, so that isn't an issue either.

A search for the message returned the Seagate CORVAULT (which I believe is built on the same OEM hardware) reference guide, which suggested that this event is logged if the dynamic spares feature is enabled, but that isn't the case here.

Any idea as to why it appears? Am I overlooking something silly?

Thanks,

Mark

DELL-Chris H · Accepted Answer

Mlundie,

I reviewed the logs, and what you are seeing and referring to is the response to the copyback initializing for the replacement. Basically it can't be used, as the disk group is already rebuilt, and it is simply copying back to the replacement from that HS, and from the logs when that completed it went back to being a Global HS.

So from the logs you had a failed drive, which in the same second the GHS started rebuilding, and 3 days later rebuild completed, you then replaced the failed drive, which then started the copyback and displayed the informational alert, then when the copyback completed the replacement was in the disk group and the HS was back as a GHS.

So as far as that you look fine, but I did notice a couple other things.

Being that the controller and the drives are behind on firmware, and I HIGHLY suggest that you update as soon as possible, as the latest updates address some other critical issues. You can find information on updating starting on page 62 here

This will require downtime to complete, but I would get the system updated as soon as you can.

Let me know if this helps anwer your questions.

DELL-Chris H · Answer

Mlundie,

Without additional information it would be difficult to tell what is causing the issue. If you would, could you pull the logs and upload them to upload. dell. com? Afterwards would you private message me the svc tag used to upload the logs, that way I can retrieve and review them for you.

You can see how to pull the logs on the ME4 here.

Let me know.

mlundie · Answer

Hi Chris,

Many thanks for looking into this. That makes sense. I was concerned by the wording of the message that none of the global spares could be used, so that is a relief.

I'll get those firmware updates scheduled in asap.

Thanks again,

Mark

PowerVault

ME4084 - No dedicated or global spare available message

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