HP LH4r Pre-Failure Warranty-Minimizing Unplanned Downtime - Page 5

ZKLWHýSDSHU +3ý 1HW6HUYHUý 0DQDJHPHQW Hard Disk Drives All hard disk drives shipped with HP NetServers or available as accessories are now SMART (Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology)-enabled.4 These drives have been designed with the capability to inform the host (system administrator) when a drive is experiencing abnormal operation that is likely to lead to drive failure. Indicators (attributes) that correlate to imminent drive failure have been determined through research. Some of these indicators include start times, short/average/long seek times and recoverable and unrecoverable data error rates. SMART drives constantly take internal measurements of these indicators to determine performance or operation deterioration. If a SMART attribute crosses a predefined threshold, then an error is reported to the system administrator through HP TopTools for Servers. By sending this warning in advance of the drive failure, HP alerts the administrator to schedule drive replacement prior to drive failure. HP recommends that, in most cases, the drive should be replaced within 24 hours of a SMART report. Of course, no system can predict all possible failure mechanisms. Server components, including hard disk drives, are simply too complex. The HP method of alerting the system administrator through the Pre-Failure Warranty provides reasonable protection against a significant number of possible failure scenarios. Third-Party Drives Before HP ships any drive model, it must pass a stringent battery of qualification tests. The HP testing process has been customized over many years of experience with disk drives. HP continues to improve the testing process so that even the most obscure problems may be detected. Because third-party drives have not undergone the HP qualification process, the HP Pre-Failure Warranty does not cover them. In fact, HP customers who have purchased certain hot-swappable drives that are advertised as 100%-compatible, but that have not been qualified by HP, may receive false pre-failure notifications or even no notification at all. Memory Memory system integrity is essential to keeping complex networking systems up and available. A memory subsystem failure can significantly affect a company's productivity. Basic fault-management components, such as Error Correction Code (ECC) memory and the Pre-Failure Warranty, are necessary to support memory-intensive applications such as databases. As both the memory configurations and the user population increase in size, the potential increases that a memory failure will negatively impact a great number of users. Two types of memory errors can occur. A hard error is a physical failure within a Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) cell that prevents data from being stored reliably in one or more locations. Failure of a single DRAM cell can abruptly halt a system. Soft errors often result from a temporary loss of charge in a DRAM cell. These errors, which are 4 Only SMART-enabled hard disk drives will issue pre-failure alerts. 5