Miscellaneous Equipment Specification (Mes) Instructions; Ess 3200 Storage Drives Concurrent Mes Upgrade - IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 Service Manual

Miscellaneous equipment specification (MES) instructions

An IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 hardware change can be done by using the MES instructions.

ESS 3200 storage drives concurrent MES upgrade

An online IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 MES upgrade is supported for customers who want to
upgrade a 12-drive IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 to a 24-drive IBM Elastic Storage System 3200.
To upgrade the system, the NVMe drives with the same size as the existing 12 drives must be used. This
MES upgrade doubles the available storage capacity in the existing IBM Elastic Storage System 3200. For
this concurrent upgrade, it is suggested to complete this operation during a period of low workload stress.
Existing customer recovery group and file system data are preserved during the MES upgrade.
Supported upgrade path: 12 NVMe IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 > 24 NVMe IBM Elastic Storage
System 3200
Prerequisites
• All new or existing building blocks must be at the ESS 6.1.1.1 or higher. If the setup has any protocol
nodes, these nodes must also be upgraded to ESS 6.1.1.1 levels (underlying code IBM Spectrum Scale
5.1.1.1) and must be verified by using the essinstallcheck command.
• The system must be working correctly before the IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 storage MES
upgrade.
• The existing IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 must be a properly installed 12 NVMe system with 12
NVMe drives correctly located in slots 1 - 6 and 13 - 18.
• If the canister servers are allocated as quorum servers, understand the implications of losing a quorum
server on one canister server at a time during this operation. If you do not want to lose the quorum,
move the quorum to different servers during this procedure.
• It is suggested to wear an ESD wrist band when you work on the hardware, for example, inserting NVMe
drives.
MES upgrade overview
GPFS uses preferentially the new network shared disks (NSDs) to store data of a new file system. GPFS
has four new NSDs that are the same as the four original NSDs and the workload on each server is the
same as it was before. The new file system data goes to the four new NSDs, like before the resizing,
the original file system data goes to the four original NSDs. Consider the necessity of restriping and the
current demands on the system. New data that is added to the file system is correctly striped. Restriping
a large file system requires many insert operations and delete operations, which might affect the system
performance. Restripe a large file system, when the system demand is low.
Concurrent MES upgrade steps
1. Ensure that the technical delivery assessment (TDA) process is complete before you start the MES
upgrade. This step is necessary if you did not purchase MES and attend the TDA with sales.
2. Ensure that the system is at the minimum ESS 6.1.1.1 or higher for the storage MES.
Note: For FCM drives, the system must be at minimum level of 6.1.2.3.
3. If you lose out quorum on each canister server causes an issue with the customer configuration
during MES upgrade, move the quorum to other supported nodes in the system.
4. Ensure that the 12 new NVMe drive FRUs are of the same capacity as the original 12 NVMe drives.
5. Insert the 12 new NVMe drive FRUs into slots 7 - 12 and 19 - 24.
Do not move the original 12 NVMe drives to different slots.
6. To get the node class name and recovery group name, issue the following command:
Chapter 1. Servicing (customer tasks) 21