Storage Partitioning Premium Feature - Out Of Compliance

What Caused the Problem?

The Storage Partitioning Premium Feature is out of compliance.

This problem can occur in the following scenarios:

Scenario 1 (Most common scenario) - The current number of partitions on the storage array exceeds the number of partitions allowed. See the Important Notes for more detail on this scenario.
Scenario 2 (Less common scenario) - You connected physical disks to one or more RAID controller modules where 1) the RAID controller modules were NOT previously attached to any physical disks and 2) the physical disks were already previously configured while attached to other RAID controller modules where the Storage Partitioning feature was supported and enabled. In this Scenario, you can get this problem even if there are no partitions on the storage array. See the Important Notes for more detail on this scenario.

The Recovery Guru Details area provides specific information you will need as you follow the recovery steps.

Important Notes

This problem can occur if you disable a Feature Pack key. Disabling a feature pack key can result in multiple individual features transitioning to an Out of Compliance state since you may have globally lowered the limits supported by the storage array. If there is a Feature Pack Out of Compliance problem in the Summary Area, complete those recovery steps first. If this problem still appears after you complete the Recovery Steps for the Feature Bundle Out of Compliance problem, then proceed with the Recovery Steps below.
Scenario 1 typically happens because you:
- Disabled the Storage Partitioning feature while partitions are still present (in other words, the storage array allows zero since the Storage Partitioning feature is disabled, and you currently have more than 0)
- Enabled or Disabled a Feature Pack resulting in the storage array allowing less partitions than are currently present on the storage array (See first bullet, above)
Scenario 2 happens because the RAID controller modules were not previously attached to physical disks, so the RAID controller modules 'adopt' the configuration database of the first physical disk they encounter. When physical disks are adopted by the RAID controller modules, the configuration database contained on the physical disks (which includes all of the information about the previous storage array, including the Enabled/Disabled information of features) is used by the RAID controller modules. Therefore, the information in the configuration database shows that the Storage Partitioning feature is enabled, but the feature is either disabled on this storage array or not supported by the RAID controller modules. If the RAID controller modules had been previously attached to physical disks and then another set of physical disks are added, then the new physical disks would be 'imported' (overwriting the configuration database) rather than 'adopted' since the RAID controller module is using the configuration database of the existing physical disks.
For Scenario 1, you can fix this problem in two ways:
- You can re-enable the Storage Partitioning feature key
- You can remove partitions until you are below the limit allowed by the storage array
For Scenario 2, you can fix this problem in two ways:
- You can disable the Storage Partitioning feature once all of the partitions have been removed
- You can enable the Storage Partitioning feature key if it is supported by this storage array

The following events will occur while this feature is in an Out of Compliance state:

This storage array will remain in a Needs Attention state
A critical event will be logged once every 24 hours
Alert notifications will be sent, if configured
You will NOT be able to:
- Create new configuration objects (Automatically or Manually) - such as virtual disks, snapshots, mirror relationships, virtual disk copy pairs, and storage partitions
- Assign hot spares
- Change the segment size of a virtual disk
- Change the RAID level of a disk group
- Expand the capacity of a disk group or virtual disk

Recovery Steps

If...	Then...
This problem occurred due to Scenario 1	Go to Procedure for Scenario 1.
This problem occurred due to Scenario 2	Go to Procedure for Scenario 2.

Procedure for Scenario 1

If...

Then...

You want to resolve this problem by enabling the Storage Partitioning feature key

Go to step 2.

You want to resolve this problem by removing partitions until you are below the limit allowed by the storage array

Reduce the number of partitions to equal to or less than the number of partitions allowed. The maximum number of partitions is listed in the Recovery Guru Details area.

Click the Edit Host-to-Virtual Disk Mappings link from the Modify tab.

The dialog displays all the mappings for this storage array. There are three rules you should be aware of when considering what mappings need to change to reduce the number of partitions to the allowable limit.

Rule 1	Each host group or host that has a specific mapping represents ONE partition. If there are two or more mappings on the same host group or host, those mappings still represent just ONE partition.
Rule 2	If a host group has mappings and a host that is part of the host group also has mappings of its own, the host group and host (and their associated mappings) represent TWO distinct partitions.
Rule 3	The default host group does not constitute one of the partitions.

Caution: Potential loss of data access. Removing or changing mappings may cause any host attached to the storage array to lose visibility of a file system mounted on the storage array. Stop I/Os on the affected virtual disks before changing or removing them.

Highlight a mapping and click either the Change or Remove button. If you change a mapping, either move the mapping to another host group or host that already has mappings, or move it to the default group.

After making the appropriate changes, go to step 3.

From the Tools tab, click the View/enable premium features link.

If...	Then...
The Storage Partitioning feature appears in this dialog (regardless of status)	A separate Feature Key File is needed to enable the Storage Partitioning feature. If the Storage Partitioning feature has already been enabled at any time for this storage array, you should already have a Feature Key File. Otherwise, you will need to perform the following: Retrieve the Feature Enable Identifier from the Premium Features dialog. Contact your technical support representative to request a Feature Key File. Once you have located your existing Feature Key File or obtained the appropriate Feature Key File from your technical support representative, click the Enable a feature link to enable it. When you are finished enabling the feature, go to step 3.
The Storage Partitioning feature does NOT appear in this dialog	Your storage array cannot support the Storage Partitioning feature. It is possible that you can upgrade to a Feature Pack that will allow support for the Storage Partitioning feature. You can contact your technical support representative to see if your storage array can be upgraded to a different Feature Pack, or you can repeat step 1 to remove the extra partitions now.

Click the Recheck button to rerun the Recovery Guru. The failure should no longer appear in the Summary area. If the failure appears again, contact your technical support representative.

Procedure for Scenario 2

If...	Then...
You want to enable the Storage Partitioning feature	Go to step 2.
You want to disable the Storage Partitioning feature	Go to step 3.

From the Tools tab, click the View/enable premium features link.

If...

Then...

The Storage Partitioning feature appears in this dialog (regardless of status)

A separate Feature Key File is needed to enable the Storage Partitioning feature. If the Storage Partitioning feature has already been enabled at any time for this storage array, you should already have a Feature Key File. Otherwise, you will need to perform the following:

Retrieve the Feature Enable Identifier from the Premium Features dialog.
Contact your technical support representative to request a Feature Key File.
Once you have located your existing Feature Key File or obtained the appropriate Feature Key File from your technical support representative, click the Enable a feature link to enable it.

When you are finished enabling the feature, go to step 5.

The Storage Partitioning feature does NOT appear in this dialog

Your storage array cannot support the Storage Partitioning feature.

It is possible that you can upgrade to a Feature Pack that will allow support for the Storage Partitioning feature. You can contact your technical support representative to see if your storage array can be upgraded to a different feature pack, or you can go to step 3 to disable the feature now.

Refer to the Details area to see how many partitions are present.

If...

Then...

There are currently partitions that need to be removed before disabling the feature

Remove all of the partitions.

a	Click the Edit Host-to-Virtual Disk Mappings link from the Modify tab. Caution: Potential loss of data access. Removing or changing mappings may cause any host attached to the storage array to lose visibility of a file system mounted on the storage array. Stop I/Os on the affected virtual disks before changing or removing them.
b	Highlight a mapping and then click the Remove button.
c	Repeat step b to remove all mappings, and then go to step 4.

There are no partitions

Go to step 4.

Disable the Storage Partitioning feature.

Open a Command Prompt, and type the following command:

SMcli -n <storageArray_name>;

where storageArray_name is the name of the storage array listed in the Details area.

Note: If you receive an error from this command, change your working directory to the directory that contains the SMcli executable.

Execute the following command to manually disable the Gold Key-dependent feature:

disable storageArray feature=<feature_name>;

where feature_name can be one of the following: storagePartition2, storagePartition4, storagePartition, storagePartition16, storagePartition64, or storagePartitionMax.

c Go to step 5.

5 Click the Recheck button to rerun the Recovery Guru. The failure should no longer appear in the Summary area. If the failure appears again, contact your technical support representative.

Note: Additional information on this issue may be available. Please visit the Dell support website at support.dell.com and select your product model. Choose "troubleshooting" as your tool option, then search by this procedure title.