Comments on: Using generic drives in a Netapp FAS250

By: vardomskiy

vardomskiy — Tue, 25 May 2010 19:05:34 +0000

I had my post on flashing NetApp firmware onto Seagate disks suspended on livejournal.com alledgedly due to a DMCA takedown notice. So just a heads up.

By: Gasve

Gasve — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:52:14 +0000

Hi:
I already have ST31000340NS drives with SN16 Fw and the ISO images don’t work for me, I have tried using the ISO for SN16 making all the changes recommended but with no luck it tell me something about the model of the disk is not the the right.
Some has used smartmon-ux to do the fw download?

Thanks in Advance

Gasve

By: Old Moose

Old Moose — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:12:05 +0000

Get a ST31000340NS 1TB Barracuda. This drive had a Firmware-Bug so Seagate and NetApp had to release an Firmware-Update. X269_SMOOS01TSSX.NA01.LOD is the NetApp-Version for this drive. Now goto http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?&DocId=207963&NewLang=en and get SN06 ISO-Image. From this image extract the eltorito-Bootpart (Linux: geteltorito). In this Diskimage is a zip-file. Extract it, copy the NetApp-Firmware into it and modify the batchfile flash.bat. Remove the old firmware and the .txs-File to save some space.
.
.
.
set options=-s -x -b -v -a 20
.
.
:SEAFLASH2
rem set model=ST31000340NS
%exe% -m %family% -f X269_SMOOS01TSSX.NA01.LOD -i %model2% %options%
if errorlevel 2 goto WRONGMODEL2
if errorlevel 1 goto ERROR
goto DONE
.
.
.

zip it again, put it into the diskimage and create a bootfloppy from it (dd). Attach the harddisk to a SATA-Controller, boot the PC from the floppy and flash the disk. After that you have a NetApp-Disk with Bad label…how to solve this is mentioned in the text above.

By: Old Moose

Old Moose — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:07:53 +0000

Get a ST31000340NS 1TB Barracuda. This drive had a Firmware-Bug so Seagate and NetApp had to release an Firmware-Update. X269_SMOOS01TSSX.NA01.LOD is the NetApp-Version for this drive. Now goto http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?&DocId=207963&NewLang=en and get SN06 ISO-Image. From this image extract the eltorito-Bootpart (Linux: geteltorito). In this Diskimage is a zip-file. Extract it, copy the NetApp-Firmware into it and modify the batchfile flash.bat. Remove the old firmware and the .txs-File to save some space.
.
.
.
:SEAFLASH2
rem set model=ST31000340NS
%exe% -m %family% -f X269_SMOOS01TSSX.NA01.LOD -i %model2% %options%
if errorlevel 2 goto WRONGMODEL2
if errorlevel 1 goto ERROR
goto DONE
.
.
.

By: Dana Mandell

Dana Mandell — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:45:09 +0000

Nice work!
This all looks good, and I have been successful at “flashing” IDE and FC drive for use in NetApp, but has anyone tried SATA drives? Something must be very different since the blocks size is fixed at 512 bytes on SATA drives and cannot be reformatted to 520. (I noticed that even the NetApp SATA drives show up as having 512 byte blocks.)

By: uphill

uphill — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:19:03 +0000

I spent more than half a day :-) Thanks, your work was indeed very useful.

By: vardomskiy

vardomskiy — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:02:18 +0000

Hey, cool.

Since I was basically working on a shelf full of new drives, I didn’t think of copying the disk over in maintenance mode. I guess that’s the best option if you only work on a single drive.

After re-reading my instructions, I realized that I forgot to mention that I had a spare ESH2 that I was able to pop into the DS14mk2 instead of FAS250 module. So in essence I was turning an FAS250 into a dumb FC shelf for the time. But if you have some other means of attaching FC disk to a Linux system and uploading firmware/formatting the disk a 3rd party disk enclosure), you of course could use it for the Linux stage.

I also downplay the importance of seatools during the Linux stage, since the system I use was IDE only, and dmesg was making very clear what the device ids of the drives were. st is very nice in terms of information it provides, but I was very frustrated about the fact that it was segfaulting for me during the firmware update step.

Lastly, it might make sense to issue ‘disk zero spares’ command if you plan to use that disk as a spare.

Any way, glad that half a day of my research was useful to someone.