HPE warns of SSD storage systems failure coming soon

[German]A counter in the firmware of certain HPE SSD storage systems may overflow in the coming days, causing data loss and system failure. The manufacturer HPE warns against this scenario and asks device administrators to update the firmware.


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Data loss after 32,768 operating hours

HPE has been informed about a firmware defect by a Solid State Drive (SSD) manufacturer. This affects certain SAS SSD models used in a number of HPE server and storage products. Affected are HPE ProLiant, Synergy, Apollo, JBOD D3xxx, D6xxx, D8xxx, MSA, StoreVirtual 4335 and StoreVirtual 3200. Users of the HPE systems 3PAR, Nimble, Simplivity, XP and Primera are (according to German news magazine heise) not affected.

In the affected HPE SSD storage media a counter for the operating hours runs in the firmware. In the SSD firmware version installed on the devices, a drive failure and data loss occurs after 32,768 operating hours. This requires a recovery of data from the backup. Using the drives in a fault tolerant RAID mode (e.g. RAID 0) does not protect against data loss, if more drives fail than are supported by the logical drive in the fault tolerant RAID mode. This scenario is likely to cause the SSDs in the RAID array to reach operating hours and fail almost simultaneously.

HPE has provided updated HPD8 firmware to solve the problem. The firmware update is considered a critical fix and is required to prevent the scenario described above. HPE strongly recommends that administrators apply this critical fix immediately.

Affected devices

The problem affects SSDs with an HPE firmware version prior to HPD8, which leads to SSD failure at 32,768 operating hours (i.e. 3 years, 270 days, 8 hours). After the SSD failure occurs, neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered. In addition, SSDs put into service at the same time are likely to fail almost simultaneously.

HP has issued a warning entitled HPE SAS Solid State Drives – Critical Firmware Upgrade Required for Certain HPE SAS Solid State Drive Models to Prevent Drive Failure at 32,768 Hours of Operation. This document contains a table with a list of affected SSD drives. The website also provides information and download links to update the firmware on Linux, Windows and VMware ESXi.


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