I wanted to know if a certain server had a Battery Backed Write Cache module (BBWC) on it’s array controller.

I suspected it did not, but I had to be sure. Since this server was running production I couldn’t open (Visual Inspection) or reboot it.

The server didn’t have Insight Agents installed so I couldn’t query it via iLO or the Insight Agents webpage either.

I knew that when you do a full install of the array controller bundled software it comes with a commandline tool, hpacucli.exe.

(more…)

I was deploying virtualized Citrix XenApp Servers on HP BL460c G6 servers and somehow the storage (direct attached) responded very slowly.

I had expected reduced performance (see my earlier post) since I didn’t have the  Battery Backed Write Cache module installed.
I did order them but had to start deployment before they arrived.

I did not however expect such an extreme bad performance. Deployment took ages or sometimes failed completely and when logging in to a VM it responded very sluggish.

Disk Latency

I looked in the vSphere console what the Disk Latency was. Latency under 10ms is usually considered good while a latency between 10 and 20ms is a potential performance problem.

I was shocked to notice that the Disk Latency was much higher with peaks toward 2.000 ms (2 seconds!):

(more…)

I ran into an error when I was upgrading hardware on an HP BL460c G6 Blade.

After placing 2 new (larger) hard drives the Array Configuration would hang after saving the configuration (It just kept blinking “Saving Configuration.” forever.

After a reset the Smart Array Controller (P410) halted a very long time on Initializing and eventually failed.

I retried the whole procedure with the same result but this time the controller reported: “previous lockup code 0xAB”.

My next step would be a firmware update and this kb article from HP confirms that it was indeed a firmware issue: HP Serial Smart Array Controllers P410/411/212/712m/410i – May Hang with Lockup Error Code 0XAB Configured in Zero Memory Mode.

This kb article also tells me why I didn’t have this error on another blade: that one had the Battery Backed Write Cache module.