After you replace a hard drive the following command is a great tool to see where the array is at during the rebuild process.

From the CLI, use the command “lsarraymember progress” to display array member background process status.

At present (2012) IBM does not provide much of a tools set for analyzing Easytier SSD usage.

You can get a fair assessment by using the “Storage Tier Advisor Tool”  StorageDisk-2076-STAT

1. After downloading and installing this goto a command line
2. cd Program FilesIBMSTAT
3. Now log into the V7000 GUI and goto Settings – Support
4. Below the Download Support Package click on “Show Full Log Listing”
5. Find  /dumps/dpa_heat.## – look for the one with the most resent time stamp
6. Right click on the file and download it.
7. Move this downloaded file to Program FilesIBMSTAT
8. From the command line type stat dpa_heat.WhateverNumbersAndLettersAreHere – an index.html files will be created
9. Display the index.html file in your web browser

One of the most useful pages is the Volume Heat Distribution.  Be prepared with a to use your Hex to Decimal converter to match up the  Volume ID of the report with Volume ID of the V7000 GUI interface.

After setting up easytier on your pools, you will more than likely need to turn it off on individual volumes that you do not want consuming the currently very expensive SSD drives.

Log into your V7000 through the CLI
1. Type: chvdisk -easytier off NameOfYourVolume
2. Migrate the volume to a new storage pool that does not use easytier and then migrate it back.

This migration pulls the data off of the SSDs to free up the used space.

To verify whether easytier is turn off on a volume through the GUI do the following:
1. Log into the V7000 GUI
2. Click on the Volume Icon
3. Scroll down to the volume in question and right click on it – then click properties
4. Make certain the “Show Details” box is check at the lower left hand part of the pop-up window
5. At the upper right hand corner you will your storage pool listed.  The Easy Tier Status should show “measured”.

Volumes running easytier will show Easy Tier Status: Active

DS4000 and DS5000
IBM Midrange System Storage Hardware Guide

Excellent Resource:
http://www.techpository.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/DS4000-5000Guide.pdf

A drive failed our DS4700

After replacing the drive, I was unable to get the drive that took over as a hot spare to copy the data back to the new drive.
I did the following to get around this issue:

1. In system storage DS for the DS4700 click on the Logical Tab.
2. Right click on the storage subsystem with the problem drives.
3. Select replace drives. You will see the failed drive and available drive(s)
– In my case slot 7 failed.  Slot 12 was the in-use hot spare.  The new drive in slot 7 was showing as an unassigned drive
4. Select the “In-Use Hot Spare”
5. Click Replace Drive
6. Now make the new unassigned drive a hot spare.