Sun Microsystems 3900, 6900 manual Predictive Failure Analysis PFA Capabilities

Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA)

Capabilities

The Storage Automated Diagnostic Environment software provides the health and monitoring functions for the Sun StorEdge 3900 and 6900 series systems. This software provides the following predictive failure analysis (PFA) capabilities:

■FC links—Fibre Channel (FC) links are monitored at all end points using the Fibre Channel-Extended Link Service (FC-ELS) link counters. When link errors surpass the threshold values, an alert is sent. This enables Sun-trained personnel to replace components that are experiencing high transient fault levels before a hard fault occurs.

■Enclosure status—Many devices, like the Sun StorEdge FC switch-8 and switch- 16 switch and the Sun StorEdge T3+ array, cause the Storage Automated Diagnostic Environment alerts to be sent if the temperature thresholds are exceeded. This enables Sun-trained personnel to address the problem before the component and enclosure fails.

■Single Point-of-Failure (SPOF) notification—Storage Automated Diagnostic Environment notification for path failures and failovers (that is, Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager software failover) can be considered a PFA method, since Sun- trained personnel are notified and can repair the primary path. This eliminates the time of exposure to SPOF and helps to preserve customer availability during the repair process.

PFA is not always effective in detecting or isolating failures. The remainder of this document provides guidelines that you can use to troubleshoot problems that occur in supported components of the Sun StorEdge 3900 and 6900 series.

2 Sun StorEdge 3900 and 6900 Series 2.0 Troubleshooting Guide • March 2003

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