Background and overview

ESS 4.5 introduced ESS Management Server and I/O Server HW call home capability in ESS 5146 systems, where hardware events are monitored by the HMC managing these servers.

When a serviceable event occurs on one of the monitored servers, the Hardware Management Console (HMC) generates a call home event. ESS 5.X provides additional Call Home capabilities for the drives in the attached enclosures of ESS 5146 and ESS 5148 systems.

Figure 1. ESS Call Home block diagram

In ESS 5146 the HMC obtains the health status from the Flexible Service Process (FSP) of each server. When there is a serviceable event detected by the FSP, it is sent to the HMC, which initiates a call home event if needed. This function is not available in ESS 5148 systems.

The IBM Spectrum Scale™ RAID pdisk is an abstraction of a physical disk. A pdisk corresponds to exactly one physical disk, and belongs to exactly one de-clustered array within exactly one recovery group.

When the pdisk state is ok, the pdisk is healthy and functioning normally. When the pdisk is in a diagnosing state, the IBM Spectrum Scale RAID disk hospital is performing a diagnosis task after an error has occurred.

The disk hospital is a key feature of the IBM Spectrum Scale RAID that asynchronously diagnoses errors and faults in the storage subsystem. When the pdisk is in a missing state, it indicates that the IBM Spectrum Scale RAID is unable to communicate with a disk. If a missing disk becomes reconnected and functions properly, its state changes back to ok. For a complete list of pdisk states and further information on pdisk configuration and administration, see IBM Spectrum Scale RAID Administration .

Any pdisk that is in the dead, missing, failing or slow state is known as a non-functioning pdisk. When the disk hospital concludes that a disk is no longer operating effectively and the number of non-functioning pdisks reaches or exceeds the replacement threshold of their de-clustered array, the disk hospital adds the replace flag to the pdisk state. The replace flag indicates the physical disk corresponding to the pdisk that must be replaced as soon as possible. When the pdisk state becomes replace, the drive replacement callback script is run.

The callback script communicates with the Electronic Service Agent™ (ESA) over a REST API. The ESA is installed in the ESS Management Server (EMS), and initiates a call home task. The ESA is responsible for automatically opening a Service Request (PMR) with IBM® support, and managing end-to-end life cycle of the problem.