Centera SN3 HELP!

N

ntba

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 28, 2005
Messages
185
A couple of weeks ago I found an AWESOME deal on something I haven't used before, An EMC Centera SN3 Storage Server, P4 Prescott @ 2.8 Ghz, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, 4 x 320 GB SATA150 Drives...Basically something amazing for about 400 bucks.

I asked in the networking forum for any details on it a couple of weeks ago and with some googleing that went nowhere I found out that these EMC's are high end proprietary stuff based on plain jane vanilla hardware. I think I read EMC has its own operating system that runs on these and wont boot if it isn't part of a cluster.

When I bought it it had Fedora Core 7 on it and I installed Win 2K3 on it through a USB CD drive. For the most part it works just as any computer would apart from a couple of things. I can't turn it off, I probably can but I haven't found it just yet. There is a power button but it only puts it into some sort of standby that still makes the PSU fan spin. Another thing that I can't seem to figure out is that there is a "Health/Pulse/?" LED that keeps blinking, and as I well know from my Dell Poweredge it means something, but without doumentation or proprietary EMC software I can't find out what. I think it has something to do with when I pull the power plug since like I mentioned you can't really turn it off.

Other things I noticed were that it is LOUD, I put it in my basement and its fine but is it ever loud!

Finally since it is some sort of motherboard and proprietary system made especially for EMC from what I can tell. I can't get into any of the monitoring hardware to check temps and fan speeds and voltages? I can with speedfan, but its not very good or sometimes doesnt work. After a while it times out and refuses to give me anything except the HD temps

This is where I need your guys help, any info, any documentation, and ANYTHING you can tell me about this would be so amazing, I'd like to use it as a storage server but until I know EVERY aspect of this I can't trust my data to it. If it comes to it, I'll just buy a cheap LGA 775 mobo and pop the drives, ram and p4 in there, it'll still be worth it!

Thanks in advance!
 
Keep dreaming.

It's an EMC. It's all proprietary. The only people who could possibly get you documentation, work at EMC, and they'd get fired for doing so. It's not a PC, it's not designed to behave like a PC, etcetera. Amazed Win2K3 even runs on it. As for the blinking light, that's the heartbeat/watchdog indicator. If it stops blinking, processor hung and the system restarts itself.
 
I thought it might have been a heartbeat type thing. Thanks.

As for the lack of documentation, I mean it can't be THAT impossible? Can it? Who can keep a lid on DOCUMENTATION that tight? Could it possibly be leaked onto P2P sites?

So far its working great, and I'm transferring gigabytes of data with no problems, running like a charm!
 
Don't get your hopes up. Even the guys that support the EMC equipment on the floor at Dell, don't have that kind of documentation. I seriously doubt the Engineers even have the kind of info you are looking for. If they did, they would be under NDA.

If that array is anything like the other EMC arrays, it originally had Windows XP or Windows 2000 running on the storage processor (the thing you keep calling a motherboard). Typically when a support tech needs to reinstall the OS, there is a recovery image, but since your has been wiped, you no longer have the recovery image.

Two storage processors are not necessary, as you have discovered, the other one is for fail over and load balancing.
 
ntba said:
A couple of weeks ago I found an AWESOME deal on something I haven't used before, An EMC Centera SN3 Storage Server, P4 Prescott @ 2.8 Ghz, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, 4 x 320 GB SATA150 Drives...Basically something amazing for about 400 bucks.

I asked in the networking forum for any details on it a couple of weeks ago and with some googleing that went nowhere I found out that these EMC's are high end proprietary stuff based on plain jane vanilla hardware. I think I read EMC has its own operating system that runs on these and wont boot if it isn't part of a cluster.

When I bought it it had Fedora Core 7 on it and I installed Win 2K3 on it through a USB CD drive. For the most part it works just as any computer would apart from a couple of things. I can't turn it off, I probably can but I haven't found it just yet. There is a power button but it only puts it into some sort of standby that still makes the PSU fan spin. Another thing that I can't seem to figure out is that there is a "Health/Pulse/?" LED that keeps blinking, and as I well know from my Dell Poweredge it means something, but without doumentation or proprietary EMC software I can't find out what. I think it has something to do with when I pull the power plug since like I mentioned you can't really turn it off.

Other things I noticed were that it is LOUD, I put it in my basement and its fine but is it ever loud!

Finally since it is some sort of motherboard and proprietary system made especially for EMC from what I can tell. I can't get into any of the monitoring hardware to check temps and fan speeds and voltages? I can with speedfan, but its not very good or sometimes doesnt work. After a while it times out and refuses to give me anything except the HD temps

This is where I need your guys help, any info, any documentation, and ANYTHING you can tell me about this would be so amazing, I'd like to use it as a storage server but until I know EVERY aspect of this I can't trust my data to it. If it comes to it, I'll just buy a cheap LGA 775 mobo and pop the drives, ram and p4 in there, it'll still be worth it!

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Sorry for the thread bump but I noticed this thread while searching for something else.

What you have there is a Gen 1 / Gen 2 Centera. This is EMC's online archiving platform and is currently on Gen 4 v2. You unit is maybe 4/5 years old.

It is meant to be deployed in increments of at least 4 nodes and up to...well...thousands. These things can replicate over IP to another site - so you can store all your archive data on slower ATA disks - things like old emails, old files that havn't been opened for months. As they replicate you've no need to back them up - viola! Terabytes out of your SAN and backup schedule!

It also meets compliance in pretty much every industry - the SEC themselves use it.

It has an API through which it can be communicated to - there is a Centera Community group somewhere (use google). Problem is you put a different OS on it! I'm pretty sure there is no recovery software available to the mere mortal user!

My advice to you is to take the drives out and put them in a small home made server. What you have is a noisy, dual CPU unit that is using a lot of power and just sitting there being loud. A Pentium 3 could probably meet your file sharing needs! I see from a more recent thread that you seem to still have it!
 
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