EMC® VNX® Series Security Configuration Guide for VNX

Hot spare operations

When a system is already configured with DEKs for all the disk drives in the system that are in RGs or storagepools, drives that are not currently in a RG or storagepool are considered unbound drives. Removal of unbound drives or unbound drives that become faulted have no affect on the keystore and therefore do not require a backup of the keystore file. Likewise, replacement of an unbound drive has no affect on the keystore and therefore does not require a backup of the keystore file.

When a system is already configured with DEKs for all the drives in the system that are in RGs or storagepools, those drives are considered bound drives. If a bound drive is removed or the drive becomes faulted, and after a period of five minutes a permanent hot spare replaces the removed or faulted drive, a DEK is generated for the hot spare, and rebuild begins. The DEK from the removed drive will be removed immediately from the keystore. A keystore modified status will be set by the Key Manager at this point and will trigger an alert to back up the keystore because DEK modifications were made to the keystore.

If the removed disk drive is reinserted anywhere in the system before the five minute period has expired, a rebuild will not be required and modifications will not be made to the keystore. The DEK will remain the same because the key is associated with the disk drive, not the slot. Also, a keystore modified status alert will not be generated.