Dell PowerVault D3000i – Blinky Blinky

One of our PowerVault MD3000i storage devices in the lab has been blinking at me for the last few weeks. I could stand it no longer and it moved to the top of my list of things to do.

The MD Storage Array Manager is easy enough to use and told me, "some I/O was lost for extended period, we collected diagnostic data." It further explained that all I needed to do was reset the diagnostic data bit with a simple command and the light would go off: "reset storageArray diagnosticData"

Hmmm, easy enough. I connected my serial cable to the box and logged into the console of the storage controller and tried to execute the command. The serial shell promptly told me, "reset is overloaded...undefined symbol: storageArray." Maybe I had a typo? Tried it again, but no joy.

A note was sent to an engineering contact, with a quick reply of "right command, wrong environment. Run it using the SMCLI command." So, if I just would have RTFM'd a little closer, it clearly states to run the command from the CLI.

Oh the little things in life that bring us pleasure. Now the light is again glowing a soothing shade of blue. I once heard from someone that studies were done around calming affects of different colors. The results of those studies resulted in the shade of blue light that you now find on servers, storage, stereo equipment, and many other things. Of course it could also be an urban legend.

Scott