Looking for documentation for Engenio 4600 rackmount fiber channel storage appliance

[Chetar Ruby]

A friend of my suggested I come here and try posting.  I have this older Engenio Class 4600 Model 0834 drive chassis.  It's two power supplies, two drive I/F modules, and 16 fiber channel HDDs.  The thing works, boots up, even can see some of the drives on the fiber channel connection to my workstation.

 

However, I do not have the serial cable, nor any of the software.  NetApp has rejected photographs of the device's tags and serial, refusing to help me in any way with software, documentation or support of any kind.  So here I am, seeing if I can get any information.  Anyone got documentation for this thing?  Anyone know where I can buy the frickin' serial cable?  Or possibly a pinout for it so I can construct one myself?  It's a strange animal, seems to be a PS2-style round connector to plug into the drive I/F module, what on the other end I have no idea, hopefully 9-pin standard serial connector.  Very much wanting to buy one of those so I can get into the thing.  I've tried using nmap to hunt down it's IP address while connecting it to a isolated network, but sweeping 192.168.0.0/16 and 10.0.0.0/8 yielded no response.

 

Anyone got one of these?  Can anyone point me in the right direction to get this bad-boy up and running?  I primarily want to get it going to use it to test a glut of fiber channel drives I have and want to resell, but i can't resell untested hardware, and this beast is the only fiber channel gear I have.  Seems fiber channel is pretty obscure and hard to find anything related to it.

 

I even tried pestering everyone who has one of these devices for sale on eBay.  No one with a listing as of today (2-22-2018) has any information or the serial cable, all of them selling the chassis 'as is', no docs, no nothing.  NetApp themselves is a dead-end, they refuse to help me, they are claiming it's not their gear and they have no record of the serial I provided (a photograph of the actual chassis and it's labels.)

[AbsoluteFool]

Is this the IBM Engenio SD4300 you are reffering to?

[Chetar Ruby]

Just now, AbsoluteFool said:

Is this the IBM Engenio SD4300 you are reffering to?

I'm not entirely sure.  The labels on the back say Engenio. All the other labels on the thing are in chinese.  I added the same photos I shared with NetApp.

[AbsoluteFool]

Yes that would be IBM SD4300, this should be the docs you are looking for. https://www-07.ibm.com/storage/includes/content/enewscast/midrangedisk/pdf/interop-matrix.pdf

 

While these where manufactored IBM used another company to buy modulare part. so Engenio is just the name of the modular part, like PSU or controller.

Sorry, wrote wrong in the first edit

[Chetar Ruby]

3 minutes ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Yes that would be IBM SD4300, this should be the docs you are looking for. https://www-07.ibm.com/storage/includes/content/enewscast/midrangedisk/pdf/interop-matrix.pdf

Alas, this documentation is pretty useless.  It's just showing how to connect multiple chassis, and what it's compatible with.  There's nothing here about how you're supposed to configure the thing, and worse, it's references to software point back to Engenio.com (now NetApp), they won't support it, period.  I tried wrestling with them already, they will have absolutely nothing to do with this chassis.  And even worse, there's no info on the pinout of the serial connector.  I appreciate the reply, but it doesn't really help me.  The info I really need is referencing back to NetApp for additional support/info, and there's nothing on their site.  They've scrubbed all references to this device, you just land on a generic "I have an LSI Logic device FAQ" page that has no info.

 

Anyone know where the heck I can get the software to manage the bloody thing?  As I've pointed out, NetApp won't give me jack.

[AbsoluteFool]

It stands in the paper.. https://www.ibm.com/support/home/docdisplay?lndocid=migr-65057 here is the software you need.

[Chetar Ruby]

2 minutes ago, AbsoluteFool said:

It stands in the paper.. https://www.ibm.com/support/home/docdisplay?lndocid=migr-65057 here is the software you need.

Oh nice.  I missed that skimming though it, my apologies.  Thanks for the call out there.  I'll try that out!  Got any leads on a serial cable for the thing?

[AbsoluteFool]

The serial cable sould give you access to the CLI, if i am not entirely wrong here. I do know there are white papers on the commands for it, but i will have to search a bit more to find it. In the meanwhile i've found the full documentation on the DS4300 http://ps-2.kev009.com/pccbbs/pc_servers_pdf/gc26779801.pdf

 

Found it. https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/ajax/download/77777777-0000-0000-0000-000014681740/0fa8b170-3edc-4b5e-9943-90412cef546e/attachment_14681740_Command_Line_Interface_and_Script_Comman.pdf

 

Note: The link will download the PDF automaticly. No idea why tho.

[AbsoluteFool]

I found this on a forum incase you need to reset the IP address.

 

For DS4000:
Serial cable must be a Null Modem cable.
Connect at 9600+ using 8N1 and Xon/Xoff
Press Ctrl+Break 3 time consecutively. When you see “Press the space bar for baud rate within 5 seconds.” press the Space Bar. Wait till you see that the baudrate reports being set before moving on. Send another break signal (Ctrl+Break); the following message is displayed: “Press within 5 seconds: ESC for SHELL,BREAK for baud rate.” Press Escape to access the shell of the controller. You should see a login prompt. Key in the password: infiniti, (older Sys’s =”password”)
Default IP addresses are: Controller A: 192.168.128.101, B: 192.168.128.102
Command to display IP Settings: netCfgShow
Command to change IP Settings: netCfgSet

[AbsoluteFool]

If this is a system with a round serial port (DS3000’s & DS4700), the serial adapter & cable have IBM part numbers; 39M5942 – Adapter, 39M5908 – Cable (Null modem serial cable)

 

If not it should work with a standard serial cable.

[Chetar Ruby]

You're awesome AbsoluteFool.  Thanks so much for the fantastic info.  Almost can't wait to go in to work in try some of this stuff out!

[Chetar Ruby]

So this is a follow up on this device.  I got it running thanks to AbsoluteFool's fantastic information, I ended up getting the linux version of IBM's Storage System ES DS management software.  Work great with the chassis, but immediately, it's proprietary nature reared it's ugly head again.

 

The situation:  I have this 16 drive chassis (discussed and photo above.)  I have 2 145GB Seagate FC drives installed in slots 1 and 2.  The device gets really upset and loses it configuration if you remove these drives.  The remaining 14 drives are all Seagate NL-35.2 series SATA drives, fitted with a SATA->FC interposer.  The entire chassis is FC.  The fly in the ointment here is two fold.  I have two boxes of Seagate NL35 series FC drives, all untested and unknown.  When I install one of these drives into the chassis, the storage management software gives little information, it just reports the drive is being 'bypassed' to avoid damaging my array (there's no other drives installed except those pair of 145GB FC drives.)  I thought maybe I had a bad drive, so I tried three more of them, same bull.  Drive bypassed, no real reason I can figure.  I thought maybe it was cuz the chassis was in 4GB FC mode and the drives are 2GB FC, so I flipped it back to 2GB FC and it still won't have anything to do with these drives.  Starting to feel like it's being ugly for no good reason, I experimentally set up a plain ol 1TB HDD I had, with the interposer and installed it.  This drive comes up fully, the controller reports it's size, make, model, everything, but says the drive is 'uncertified' and cannot be used.

 

So the thing refuses to accept any 'uncertified' drive, and at the same time, a similar drive is also rejected (the FC Seagate NL35.2's) even when it's very close to the stock drives (SATA Seagate NL35.)  So here's what I was hoping someone might be able to point me toward... any way to hack the firmware on this thing and replace it with straight up Linux?   Or any other firmware that will make the thing behave better and play nice with non-certified HDD's?  Is there any other things I can try with this device, or is it basically stuck the way it is, and I'm wasting my time trying to resurrect it?

 

Seems like a shame to kick it to the curb, it's a nice chassis, it runs great, but the inability to replace drives with off the shelf parts is a huge problem, like show-stopper huge.  Anyone know anything more I can do with this device, or should I just let it rust in peace?

[Salv8 (sam)]

i remember on *REALLY* old apple machines, apple wouldn't let people use third party hard drives to install the OS onto... (they haven't changed in +30 years)

this was done by modifying the partitioning software to allow it to partition non-apple branded drives...

something similar could be done with this, by either modding the software or by flashing the (whatever is controlling and managing the drives on a hardware level) firmware, you could use non certified hard drives..

how you do this, i have no idea, you are on your own, this is all i can do, maybe there is someone who has done this and has made a guide on how to allow your server to do this, but ii don't know, i have never some across this system before, online or irl