Release Note for systems built with IBM Spectrum Virtualize


This is the release note for the 8.5.4 release and details the issues resolved in 8.5.4.0. This document will be updated with additional information whenever a PTF is released.

Note: This release is a Non-Long Term Support (Non-LTS) release. Non-LTS code levels will not receive regular fix packs. Fixes for issues introduced in a Non-LTS release will be delivered in a subsequent Non-LTS or LTS release. If issues are encountered the only resolution is likely to be upgrade to a later LTS or Non-LTS release.

This document was last updated on 28 October 2024.

  1. New Features
  2. Known Issues and Restrictions
  3. Issues Resolved
    1. 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 8.5.4 release:

2. Known Issues and Restrictions

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

Upgrade to 8.5.1 and higher is not currently supported on systems with compressed volume copies in Data Reduction Pools, to avoid SVAPAR-105430.

On a small proportion of systems, this can cause a node warmstart when specific data patterns are written to compressed volumes. This restriction will be lifted in a future release.

8.5.1.0

IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS) supports policy-based replication on c5.18xlarge platform only

8.5.4.0

IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS) does not support patch installation using 'applysoftware' or 'installsoftware' command line interface

8.5.4.0

IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS) does not support integration with IBM Storage Insights by using Call Home with cloud services

8.5.4.0
The following restrictions were valid but have now been lifted


3. Issues Resolved

This release contains all of the fixes included in the 8.5.3.1 release, plus the following additional fixes.

A release may contain fixes for security issues, fixes for APARs or both. Consult 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
CVE-2023-25681 6962203 8.5.4.0

3.1 APARs Resolved

Show details for all APARs
APAR Affected Products Severity Description Resolved in Feature Tags
HU02572 All HIPER When controllers running specified code levels with SAS storage are power cycled or rebooted, there is a chance that 56 bytes of data will be incorrectly restored into the cache, leading to undetected data corruption. The system will attempt to flush the cache before an upgrade, so this defect is less likely during an upgrade. (show details)
Symptom Data Integrity Loss
Environment Controllers running 8.5.0.0 through 8.5.0.6, 8.5.1, 8.5.2 and 8.5.3 must have SAS storage to be vulnerable to this defect.
Trigger A power cycle or node reboot while the cache is not empty can trigger this defect
Workaround None
8.5.4.0 Drives
SVAPAR-90459 All HIPER Possible undetected data corruption or multiple node warmstarts if a Traditional FlashCopy Clone of a volume is created before adding Volume Group Snapshots to the volume (show details)
Symptom Data Integrity Loss
Environment Any system running code capable of creating FlashCopy Volume Group Snapshots and Traditional FlashCopy Clones
Trigger If a Traditional FlashCopy Clone is taken of a production volume before Volume Group Snapshots are added to that production volume, it is possible that data in the original Traditional Clone will become corrupt
Workaround To avoid this defect, users can use Volume Group Snapshots. If users need to access the data in these Volume Group Snapshots, the user can create a Volume Group Clone of the Volume Group Snapshot instead of creating a Traditional FlashCopy Clone of the production volume
8.5.4.0 FlashCopy
HU02586 All Critical When deleting a safeguarded copy volume which is related to a restore operation and another related volume is offline, the system may warmstart repeatedly (show details)
Symptom Multiple Node Warmstarts
Environment Systems running safeguarded copy
Trigger Deletion of a safeguarded volume while a restore is in operation
Workaround Return any related offline volumes online
8.5.4.0 Safeguarded Copy & Safeguarded Snapshots
SVAPAR-87729 All Critical After a system has logged '3201 : Unable to send to the cloud callhome servers', the system may end up with an inconsistency in the Event Log. This inconsistency can cause a number of symptoms, including node warmstarts (show details)
Symptom Multiple Node Warmstarts
Environment Any system running V8.4.1,V8.4.2,V8.5.0,V8.5.1,V8.5.2,V8.5.3
Trigger Cloud callhome errors
Workaround None
8.5.4.0 Call Home
SVAPAR-87846 All Critical Node warmstarts with unusual workload pattern on volumes with Policy-based replication (show details)
Symptom Multiple Node Warmstarts
Environment Any system running V8.5.2 or V8.5.3 and has Policy-based replication configured
Trigger Unusual workload pattern on volumes with replication policy. Specifically, if a large number (tens of thousands) of writes to the same 128k grain on a single VDisk is submitted in a short amount of time
Workaround Stop the workload pattern, disable replication, or force replication into cycling mode on the affected volume groups
8.5.4.0 Policy-based Replication
SVAPAR-91111 All Critical USB devices connected to an FS5035 node may be formatted on upgrade to 8.5.3 software (show details)
Symptom Loss of Access to Data
Environment FS5035 with a USB stick connected
Trigger Upgrading to 8.5.3
Workaround Remove USB device before upgrading to 8.5.3
8.5.4.0 Encryption
HU01782 All High Importance A node warmstart may occur due to a potentially bad SAS hardware component on the system such as a SAS cable, SAS expander or SAS HIC (show details)
Symptom Loss of Access to Data
Environment Systems that have a faulty SAS hardware component
Trigger Faulty SAS component
Workaround None
8.5.4.0 Drives
HU02539 All High Importance If an IP address is moved to a different port on a node, the old routing table entries do not get refreshed. Therefore, the IP address maybe inaccessible through the new port (show details)
Symptom None
Environment All
Trigger Moving an IP address to a different port on a node
Workaround Either reboot the node or assign an IP address that has not been used on the node since it was last rebooted
8.5.4.0
HU02558 FS5000, FS5100, FS5200, FS7200, FS7300, FS9100, FS9200, FS9500, SVC High Importance A timing window exists if a node encounters repeated timeouts on I/O compression requests. This can cause two threads to conflict with each other, thereby causing a deadlock condition to occur. (show details)
Symptom Single Node Warmstart
Environment Systems running v8.2 and later, v8.3 and later, v8.4 and later, or v8.5 and later
Trigger None
Workaround None. When the node detects the deadlock condition, it warmstarts in order to clear the issue
8.5.4.0 Compression
HU02589 FS5200, FS7200, FS9100, FS9200, FS9500 High Importance Reducing the expiration date of snapshots can cause volume creation and deletion to stall (show details)
Symptom None
Environment Systems running V8.4.2,V8.5.0,V8.5.1,V8.5.2
Trigger Reducing the expiration date of snapshots
Workaround Before the oldest snapshot of the new policy is about to be deleted, manually delete some of the older snapshots from the previous policy to prevent deletion overlap
8.5.4.0 FlashCopy, Policy-based Replication, Safeguarded Copy & Safeguarded Snapshots
SVAPAR-83290 FS5000 High Importance An issue with the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) in FlashSystem 50xx nodes may cause the TPM to become unresponsive. This can happen after a number of weeks of continuous runtime. (show details)
Symptom Single Node Warmstart
Environment FS50xx platforms running either V8.4.0,V8.4.1,V8.4.2,V8.5.0,V8.5.1,V8.5.2,V8.5.3
Trigger Unresponsive TPM
Workaround Reboot each node in turn. Wait 30 minutes between the two nodes in an I/O group, to allow hosts to failover. Check there are no volumes dependent on the second node before proceeding with the reboot. After all nodes have been rebooted, retry the configuration action, which should now complete successfully.
8.5.4.0
SVAPAR-84305 All High Importance A node may warmstart when attempting to run 'chsnmpserver -community' command without any additional parameter (show details)
Symptom Loss of Access to Data
Environment Any platform running V8.4.0
Trigger None
Workaround Use an additional parameter with the 'chsnmpserver -community' command
8.5.4.0 System Monitoring
SVAPAR-85093 All High Importance Systems that are using Policy-Based Replication may experience node warmstarts, if host I/O consists of large write I/Os with a high queue depth (show details)
Symptom Multiple Node Warmstarts
Environment Systems with Policy-Based Replication and heavy large write I/O workloads
Trigger Systems configured to use Policy-Based Replication and have host I/O consisting of large write I/Os that have a high queue depth
Workaround None
8.5.4.0 Policy-based Replication
SVAPAR-85396 FS5000, FS5100, FS5200, FS7200, FS7300, FS9100, FS9200, FS9500 High Importance Replacement Samsung NVME drives may show as unsupported, or they may fail during a firmware upgrade as unsupported, due to a VPD read problem (show details)
Symptom Loss of Redundancy
Environment Systems running V8.5.3 with industry standard NVMe drives
Trigger Drive firmware update or drive replacements
Workaround Manually power cycling the slot of the failed drive often helps
8.5.4.0 Drives
SVAPAR-89780 All High Importance A node may warmstart after running the flashcopy command 'stopfcconsistgrp' due to the flashcopy maps in the consistency group being in an invalid state (show details)
Symptom Single Node Warmstart
Environment Any system running Flashcopy
Trigger Running the 'stopfcconsistgrp' command, when the flashcopy maps are in an invalid state
Workaround None
8.5.4.0 FlashCopy
SVAPAR-89951 All High Importance A single node warmstart might occur when a volume group with a replication policy switches the replication to cycling mode. (show details)
Symptom Single Node Warmstart
Environment Systems with policy-based replication
Trigger Replication is switching from journaling to cycling mode
Workaround Contact IBM support for an action plan to force replication into cycling mode permanently
8.5.4.0 Policy-based Replication
SVAPAR-90395 FS9500, SVC High Importance FS9500 and SV3 might suffer from poor Remote Copy performance due to a lack of internal messaging resources (show details)
Symptom Performance
Environment FS9500 or SV3 systems with Remote Copy, typically running Hyperswap, Metro Mirror, Global Mirror and GMCV
Trigger Not enough resources available for Remote Copy
Workaround None
8.5.4.0 Global Mirror, Global Mirror With Change Volumes, HyperSwap, Metro Mirror
HU02594 All Suggested Initiating drive firmware update via management user interface for one drive class can prompt all drives to be updated (show details)
Symptom None
Environment Any system running V8.4.2,V8.5.0,V8.5.1,V8.5.2,V8.5.3
Trigger None
Workaround None
8.5.4.0 Drives, System Update
SVAPAR-89296 All Suggested Immediately after upgrade from pre-8.4.0 to 8.4.0 or later, EasyTier may stop promoting hot data to the tier0_flash tier if it contains non-FCM storage. This issue will automatically resolve on the next upgrade (show details)
Symptom Performance
Environment Multi-tier pools where tier0_flash contains non-FCM storage
Trigger Upgrading from pre-8.4.0 to 8.4.0
Workaround Upgrade to any later version of software, or warmstart the config node
8.5.4.0 EasyTier
SVAPAR-89781 All Suggested The 'lsportstats' command does not work via the REST API until code level 8.5.4.0 (show details)
Symptom Configuration
Environment Any system running 8.4.0 or higher
Trigger None
Workaround None
8.5.4.0

4. Useful Links

Description Link
Product Documentation
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