Network Appliance, Inc.

Netapp, Inc.

Scott D Gillette

Douglas W Coatney

A system and method for logging and storing failure analysis information on disk drive so that the information is readily and reliably available to vendor customer service and other interested parties is provided. The information, in an illustrative embodiment, is stored on a nonvolatile (flash) random access memory (RAM), found generally in most types of disk drives for storage of updateable disk drive firmware. A known location of limited size is defined in the flash RAM, to form a scratchpad. This scratchpad is a blank area of known addresses, formed during the original firmware download onto the memory, and which is itself free of firmware code. This scratchpad is sufficient in size to write a series of failure codes in a non-erasable list as failures/errors (and user/administrator attempts to unfail the disk) are logged. The log of failures always travels with the drive, and can be read by the vendor to determine the general nature of the most recent failure(s) and whether these failures represent a problematic history for the drive.

System and method for logging disk failure analysis in disk nonvolatile memory

A system and method for the reliable firmware update of a disk connected to a fibre channel loop fabric allows the specified filers and other predetermined system devices connected to the fabric to be made aware of a firmware download to the target disk without need of a system broadcast message, and while avoiding an alert or error condition such as those encountered through an FC-AL reset request. The target disk returns a special downloading firmware reject code embedded in a low-level protocol that remains operative during a firmware download. This reject code is recognized by an accessing system device as indicating that the disk is currently downloading updated firmware. In this manner, having recognized the code, the system device holds any I/O operations with respect to the target disk for a given delay time. Thus, the system device does not misinterpret the unavailability of the disk as a failure, leading to an unwanted system-wide FC-AL reset state. In one embodiment, the delay time can be approximately sixty seconds and the accessing device can poll the disk after each delay time until normal operation is restored and the reject request is no longer issued. At that time, full access to the disk is restored.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Scott D Gillette