Release Note for systems built with IBM Spectrum Virtualize


This is the release note for the 8.3 release and details the issues resolved in all Program Temporary Fixes (PTFs) between 8.3.0.0 and 8.3.0.1. This document will be updated with additional information whenever a PTF is released.

This document was last updated on 21 November 2019.

  1. New Features
  2. Known Issues and Restrictions
  3. Issues Resolved
    1. Security Issues Resolved
    2. APARs Resolved
  4. Useful Links
Note. Detailed build version numbers are included in the Update Matrices in the Useful Links section

1. New Features

The following new features have been introduced in the 8.3.0 release:

2. Known Issues and Restrictions

Note: For clarity, the terms "node" and "canister" are use interchangeably.
Details Introduced

SRA does not work after changing SSH node method from password to key on AWS.

This is a known issue that may be lifted in a future PTF.

8.3.0.0

Customers using iSER attached hosts, with Mellanox 25G adapters, should be aware that IPv6 sessions will not failover, for example, during a cluster upgrade.

This is a known issue that may be lifted in a future PTF.

8.3.0.0

Customers with 32GB DH8 systems cannot upgrade to v8.3 or later.

This is a restriction that may be lifted in a future PTF.

8.3.0.0

Customers upgrading systems with more than 64GB of RAM to v8.1 or later will need to run chnodehw to enable access to the extra memory above 64GB.

Under some circumstances it may also be necessary to remove and re-add each node in turn.

8.1.0.0
If an update stalls or fails then contact IBM Support for further assistance n/a

3. Issues Resolved

This release contains all of the fixes included in the 8.2.1.4 release, plus the following additional fixes.

A release may contain fixes for security issues, fixes for APARs or both. Consult both tables below to understand the complete set of fixes included in the release.

3.1 Security Issues Resolved

Security issues are documented using a reference number provided by "Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures" (CVE).
CVE Identifier
Link for additional Information
Resolved in
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CVE-2019-2602 1073958 8.3.0.0

3.2 APARs Resolved

Show details for all APARs
APAR
Affected Products
Severity
Description
Resolved in
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HU02014 SVC HIPER After a loss of power, where a node has a dead CMOS battery, it will fail to restart correctly. It is possible for both nodes in an IO group to experience this issue (show details) 8.3.0.1 Reliability Availability Serviceability
HU02064 SVC, V7000 HIPER An issue in the firmware for compression accelerator cards can cause offline compressed volumes. For more details refer to the following Flash  (show details) 8.3.0.1 Compression
HU01924 All Critical Migrating extents to a mdisk, that is not a member of a mdisk group, may result in a Tier 2 recovery (show details) 8.3.0.1 Thin Provisioning
HU01998 All Critical All SCSI command types can set volumes as busy, resulting in IO timeouts and multiple node warmstarts, with the possibility of an offline IO group (show details) 8.3.0.1 Hosts
HU02016 SVC Critical A memory leak in the component that handles thin-provisioned mdisks can lead to an adverse performance impact with the possibility of offline mdisks (show details) 8.3.0.1 Backend Storage
HU02036 All Critical It is possible for commands, that alter pool-level extent reservations (i.e. migratevdisk or rmmdisk), to conflict with an ongoing Easy Tier migration, resulting in a Tier 2 recovery (show details) 8.3.0.1 EasyTier
HU02043 All Critical Collecting a snap can cause nodes to run out of boot drive space and go offline with node error 565 (show details) 8.3.0.1 Support Data Collection
HU02044 All Critical A deadlock condition, affecting DRP process interaction with DRAID, can cause multiple warmstarts with the possibility of a loss of access to data (show details) 8.3.0.1 Distributed RAID, Data Reduction Pools
HU02045 All Critical When a node is removed from the cluster, using CLI, it may still be shown as online in the GUI. If an attempt is made to shutdown this node, from the GUI, whilst it appears to be online, then the whole cluster will shutdown (show details) 8.3.0.1 Graphical User Interface
HU02050 FS9100, V5000, V7000 Critical Compression hardware can have an issue processing certain types of data resulting in node reboots and marking the compression hardware as faulty even though it is serviceable (show details) 8.3.0.1 Compression
HU02077 All Critical A node upgrading to v8.3.0.0 will lose access to controllers directly-attached to its FC ports and the upgrade will stall (show details) 8.3.0.1 Backend Storage
HU02083 All Critical During DRAID rebuilds, an issue in the handling of memory buffers can lead to multiple node warmstarts and a loss of access to data (show details) 8.3.0.1 Distributed RAID
HU02086 All Critical An issue, in IP Quorum, may cause a Tier 2 recovery, during initial connection to a candidate device (show details) 8.3.0.1 IP Quorum
HU02089 All Critical Due to changes to quorum management, during an upgrade to v8.2.x, or later, there may be multiple warmstarts, with the possibility of a loss of access to data (show details) 8.3.0.1 System Update
HU02097 All Critical Workloads, with data that is highly suited to deduplication, can provoke high CPU utilisation, as multiple destinations try to dedupe to one source. This adversely impacts performance with the possibility of offline mdisk groups (show details) 8.3.0.1 Data Reduction Pools
IT30595 All Critical A resource shortage in the RAID component can cause mdisks to be taken offline (show details) 8.3.0.1 RAID
HU02006 All High Importance Garbage collection behaviour can become overzealous, adversely affect performance (show details) 8.3.0.1 Data Reduction Pools
HU02053 FS9100, V7000G3, V5100 High Importance An issue with canister BIOS update can stall system upgrades (show details) 8.3.0.1 System Update
HU02055 All High Importance Creating a FlashCopy snapshot, in the GUI, does not set the same preferred node for both source and target volumes. This may adversely impact performance (show details) 8.3.0.1 FlashCopy
HU02072 All High Importance An issue in the handling of email transmission can write a large file to the node boot drive. If this causes the boot drive to become full, the node will go offline with error 565 (show details) 8.3.0.1 System Monitoring
HU02080 All High Importance When a DRP is running low on free space, the credit allocation algorithm, for garbage collection, can be exposed to a race condition, adversely affecting performance (show details) 8.3.0.1 Data Reduction Pools
IT29975 All High Importance During Ethernet port configuration, netmask validation will only accept a fourth octet of zero. Non-zero values will cause the interface to remain inactive (show details) 8.3.0.1 iSCSI
HU02067 All Suggested If multiple recipients are specified, for callhome emails, then no callhome emails will be sent (show details) 8.3.0.1 System Monitoring
HU02073 All Suggested Detection of an invalid list entry in the parity handling process can lead to a node warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.1 RAID
HU02079 All Suggested Starting a FlashCopy mapping, within a Data Reduction Pool, a large number of times may cause a node warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.1 Data Reduction Pools, FlashCopy
HU02087 All Suggested LDAP users with SSH keys cannot create volumes after upgrading to 8.3.0.0 (show details) 8.3.0.1 LDAP
HU02084 FS9100, V5000, V7000 Suggested If a node goes offline, after the firmware of multiple NVMe drives has been upgraded, then incorrect 3090/90021 errors may be seen in the Event Log (show details) 8.3.0.1 Drives
IT30448 All Suggested If an IP Quorum app is killed, during the commit phase of a code upgrade, then that offline IP Quorum device cannot be removed, post upgrade (show details) 8.3.0.1 IP Quorum
HU02007 All HIPER During volume migration an issue, in the handling of old to new extents transfer, can lead to cluster-wide warmstarts (show details) 8.3.0.0 Storage Virtualisation
HU01888 & HU01997 All Critical An issue with restore mappings, in the FlashCopy component, can cause an IO group to warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 FlashCopy
HU01909 All Critical Upgrading a system with Read-Intensive drives to 8.2, or later, may result in node warmstarts (show details) 8.3.0.0 System Update, DRAID, Drives
HU01921 All Critical Where FlashCopy mapping targets are also in remote copy relationships there may be node warmstarts with a temporary loss of access to data (show details) 8.3.0.0 FlashCopy, Global Mirror, Metro Mirror
HU01933 All Critical Under rare circumstances the DRP deduplication rehoming process can become truncated. Subsequent detection of inconsistent metadata can lead to offline Data Reduction Pools (show details) 8.3.0.0 Data Reduction Pools, Deduplication
HU01985 All Critical As a consequence of a DRP recovery bad metadata may be created. When the region of disk associated with the bad metadata is accessed there may be an IO group warmstarts (show details) 8.3.0.0 Data Reduction Pools
HU01989 All Critical For large drives, bitmap scanning, during an array rebuild, can timeout resulting in multiple node warmstarts, possibly leading to offline IO groups (show details) 8.3.0.0 Distributed RAID
HU01990 All Critical Bad return codes from the partnership compression component can cause multiple node warmstarts taking nodes offline (show details) 8.3.0.0 Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, Global Mirror With Change Volumes
HU02005 All Critical An issue in the background copy process prevents grains, above a 128TB limit, from being cleaned properly. As a consequence there may be multiple node warmstarts with the potential for a loss of access to data (show details) 8.3.0.0 Global Mirror, Global Mirror With Change Volumes, Metro Mirror
HU02009 All Critical Systems which are using DRP, with the maximum possible extent size of 8GB, and which experience a very specific IO workload, may experience an issue due to garbage collection. This can cause repeated node warmstarts and loss of access to data (show details) 8.3.0.0 Data Reduction Pools
HU02027 All Critical Fabric congestion can cause internal resource constraints, in 16Gb HBAs, leading to lease expiries (show details) 8.3.0.0 Reliability Availability Serviceability
IT25367 All Critical A T2 recovery may occur when an attempt is made to upgrade, or downgrade, the firmware for an unsupported drive type (show details) 8.3.0.0 Drives
IT26257 All Critical Starting a relationship, when the remote volume is offline, may result in a T2 recovery (show details) 8.3.0.0 HyperSwap
HU01836 All High Importance When an auxiliary volume is moved an issue with pausing the master volume can lead to node warmstarts (show details) 8.3.0.0 HyperSwap
HU01904 All High Importance A timing issue can cause a remote copy relationship to become stuck, in a pausing state, resulting in a node warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 Global Mirror, Global Mirror With Change Volumes, Metro Mirror
HU01919 FS9100, V7000 High Importance During an upgrade some components may take too long to initialise causing node warmstarts (show details) 8.3.0.0 System Update
HU01942 FS9100, V7000, V5000 High Importance NVMe drive ports can go offline, for a very short time, when an upgrade of that drive's firmware commences (show details) 8.3.0.0 Drives
HU01969 All High Importance It is possible, after an rmrcrelationship command is run, that the connection to the remote cluster may be lost (show details) 8.3.0.0 Global Mirror, Global Mirror With Change Volumes, Metro Mirror
HU02011 All High Importance When a node warmstart occurs on a system using Data Reduction Pools, there is a small possibility that the node will not automatically return online. If the partner node is also offline, this can cause temporary loss of access to data (show details) 8.3.0.0 Data Reduction Pools
HU02012 All High Importance Under certain IO workloads the garbage collection process can adversely impact volume write response times (show details) 8.3.0.0 Data Reduction Pools
HU02051 All High Importance If unexpected actions are taken during node replacement, node warmstarts and temporary loss of access to data may occur. This issue can only occur if a node is replaced, and then the old node is re-added to the cluster (show details) 8.3.0.0 Reliability Availability Serviceability
HU01777 All Suggested Where not all IO groups have NPIV enabled, hosts may be shown as "Degraded" with an incorrect count of node logins (show details) 8.3.0.0 Command Line Interface
HU01843 All Suggested A node hardware issue can cause a CLI command to timeout resulting in a node warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 Command Line Interface
HU01868 All Suggested After deleting an encrypted external mdisk, it is possible for the 'encrypted' status of volumes to change to 'no', even though all remaining mdisks are encrypted (show details) 8.3.0.0 Encryption
HU01872 All Suggested An issue with cache partition fairness can favour small IOs over large ones leading to a node warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 Cache
HU01880 All Suggested When a write, to a secondary volume, becomes stalled, a node at the primary site may warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 Global Mirror, Global Mirror With Change Volumes, Metro Mirror
HU01892 All Suggested LUNs of greater than 2TB, presented by HP XP7 storage controllers, are not supported (show details) 8.3.0.0 Backend Storage
HU01936 All Suggested When shrinking a volume, that has host mappings, there may be recurring node warmstarts (show details) 8.3.0.0 Cache
HU01955 All Suggested The presence of unsupported configurations, in a Spectrum Virtualize environment, can cause a mishandling of unsupported commands leading to a node warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 Reliability Availability Serviceability
HU01956 All Suggested The output from a lsdrive command shows the write endurance usage, for SSDs, as blank rather than 0 (show details) 8.3.0.0 Command Line Interface
HU01963 All Suggested A deadlock condition in the deduplication component can lead to a node warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 Deduplication
HU01974 All Suggested With all Remote Support Assistant connections closed, the GUI may show that a connection is still in progress (show details) 8.3.0.0 System Monitoring
HU01978 All Suggested Unable to create HyperSwap volumes. The mkvolume command fails with CMMVC7050E error (show details) 8.3.0.0 HyperSwap
HU01979 All Suggested The figure for used_virtualization, in the output of a lslicense command, may be unexpectedly large (show details) 8.3.0.0 Command Line Interface
HU01982 All Suggested In an environment, with multiple IP Quorum servers, if the quorum component encounters a duplicate UID then a node may warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 IP Quorum
HU01983 All Suggested Improve debug data capture to assist in determining the reason for a Data Reduction Pool to be taken offline (show details) 8.3.0.0 Data Reduction Pools
HU01986 All Suggested An accounting issue in the FlashCopy component may cause node warmstarts (show details) 8.3.0.0 FlashCopy
HU01991 All Suggested An issue in the handling of extent allocation, in the DRP component, can cause a node warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 Data Reduction Pools
HU02020 FS9100, V7000, V5000 Suggested An internal hardware bus, running at the incorrect speed, may give rise to spurious DIMM over-temperature errors (show details) 8.3.0.0 Reliability Availability Serviceability
HU02029 All Suggested An issue with the SSMTP process may result in failed callhome, inventory reporting and user notifications. A testemail command will fail with a CMMVC9051E error (show details) 8.3.0.0 System Monitoring
HU02039 All Suggested An issue in the management steps of DRP recovery may lead to a node warmstart (show details) 8.3.0.0 Data Reduction Pools

4. Useful Links

Description Link
Support Websites
Update Matrices, including detailed build version
Support Information pages providing links to the following information:
  • Interoperability information
  • Product documentation
  • Limitations and restrictions, including maximum configuration limits
Spectrum Virtualize Family of Products Inter-System Metro Mirror and Global Mirror Compatibility Cross Reference
Software Upgrade Test Utility
Software Upgrade Planning