HP MSA Front Panel Indicators

michael — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:09:15 +0000

The HP MSA is a fairly popular storage device with a good feature set for small to medium sized organizations. It makes use of the familiar HP Array Configuration Utility for configuration but its front panel leaves something to be desired. I was able to obtain a document from HP support the details exactly what all of those blinking indicators really mean.

Indicator	Function	Description
0 – 2	Busy status	ON = Indicates this array controller is idle OFF = Indicates this array controller is operating at full capacity
3 – 7	Fibre Channel ID	Indicates the 5 bit ALPA assigned to this array controller (not applicable when in fabric mode.)
8	Idle Heartbeat	Indicates the Array controller is idle and functioning
9	Active/Standby	ON = Controller is active OFF = Controller is in standby
10	DMA active	ON = DMA transfers are active
11	Logical I/O active	ON = Currently processing logical requests from the Host Adapter
12	SCSI Bus 0 active	ON = Indicates requests are outstanding on the first SCSI bus
13	SCSI Bus 1 active	ON = Indicates requests are outstanding on the second SCSI bus
14	Cache Activity	ON = Cache active OFF = No cache activity BLINK = Cache transfer pending
15	Drive failure	ON = A configured hard drive has failed in the array
16	Redundancy Active	ON = indicates two controllers are in a redundant mode of operation OFF = The indicator will not be lit if there is only one array controller inserted or if the array controllers are not redundant due to some type of failure. Redundant cables must be connected to enable redundancy.
17	Fault	Amber indicates an error message has been sent to the controller display

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HP MSA Front Panel Indicators