SUMMARY: A3500

Thanks to all who replied.   Sun did the job, with the Array offline.
If anyone is interested, I will be documenting internally how to migrate from
the A3500
to local disk and back - usable when A3500 disk is managed by VxVM.

At least now, If the A3500 is still in service 2 years from now, I will know
what to do next time....
Details below.
Seth

-----Original Message-----

>>>We got a battery warning on an A3500 today.  I am curious a few things....
>>>
>>>1) Sun warnings notwithstanding, is it physically possible to swap it
while
>>>the array is up?   I suspect the answer is no, as I recall being told that
both
>>>controllers need to be pulled out.

That's actually not true.  The battery in the A3500 is not obstructed by
controllers.

Thanks three people "Kulp, Scott (Scott) %" <skulp@agere.com>,
Darren Dunham <ddunham@taos.com> and "David Hall" <dhall@vermeermfg.com>
who have made the swap without a problem.  All advised to

"replace hot but only after making sure caching is turned off.   Use the
raidutil
command to reset the date.u can reset the date then order the battery."

Unfortunately, Sun was already en route when I got the good news.


>>>2) Does anyone know how long we have till the battery is at 0?

Since the battery detection somehow can't get closer than 90 days
Our new battery is 0 to 90 days old), I assume you have 90 days.

>>>3) In a UPS-d environment, how much danger is there?

Geoff Lane <zzassgl@twirl.mcc.ac.uk> pointed out that
The battery is there to allow the controller to optimise IO by delaying
writes -- the battery covers the few seconds needed to flush the buffers
when the power is lost.  If the controller discovers the battery is too old
it switches off all the IO optimisation which may effect performance.

So, the A3500 does not offer "Trust-my-DataCenter-UPS" mode.
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