Field Reinstallation

Overview

It occasionally becomes necessary to re-install the software on Nasuni Edge Appliance hardware. (Note that the Nasuni Edge Appliance is sometimes referred to by its former name, Nasuni Filer.)

This procedure is intended to be performed by the customer without the need for Nasuni Customer Support. However, you may choose to consult Nasuni Customer Support for issues you might have during the procedure. The procedure takes 15-30 minutes.

Reasons to re-install the software on Nasuni Edge Appliance hardware

Reasons to re-install the software on Nasuni Edge Appliance hardware include the following:

The Edge Appliance has experienced a catastrophic non-hardware event and requires disaster recovery.
To prepare the Edge Appliance for a different purpose, such as re-purposing as a new Edge Appliance. For example, the Edge Appliance might have been decommissioned for some reason, and is now being reconfigured for use as a different Edge Appliance, possibly at a different location.

Field re-installation considerations and prerequisites

There are several considerations and prerequisites before performing a field re-installation.

Note: For hardware appliance models N1040, N2040, and N4040, the re-installation software is contained on an internal flash drive inside the Nasuni Edge Appliance hardware. For hardware appliance models N1050, N2050, and N4050, the re-installation software is contained on internal flash storage inside the Nasuni Edge Appliance hardware.

Warning: This procedure resets the Edge Appliance to factory settings. As a result, all cache data and configurations on this Edge Appliance are lost. The resulting Edge Appliance is then ready to be reconfigured, repurposed, or used for a disaster recovery procedure.

Warning: Network settings of the Nasuni Edge Appliance are not retained during the field re-installation process. If this process is part of a disaster recovery, before proceeding, if possible, record important network settings for use after the re-installation process. After completing the field re-installation, the Edge Appliance is ready for the disaster recovery procedure, or to be repurposed immediately.

Caution: Before performing the field reinstallation procedure, ensure that you have all of your encryption keys for that Edge Appliance, in case you perform a recovery procedure for that Edge Appliance after the field reinstallation.

Note: The RAID structure of the Nasuni Edge Appliance hardware is not built completely during the re-installation process, but takes some time to complete after the re-installation. This runs in the background. A completion progress bar displays the status of the rebuild on the Edge Appliance user interface Home page. During this time, the Nasuni Edge Appliance could experience a slight degradation in performance, depending on the Edge Appliance usage, but the RAID is fully functional and can properly handle a failed disk.

Prerequisites

Before performing a field re-installation, ensure that the following requirements are satisfied:

For N1040, N2040, and N4040: The Nasuni Edge Appliance hardware must include the internal USB flash drive. All hardware appliances should have the USB flash drive factory-installed. Nasuni Customer Support personnel can verify that this USB flash drive is present.
For N1050, N2050, and N4050: The Nasuni Edge Appliance hardware must include the internal flash storage. All hardware appliances should have the flash storage factory-installed. Nasuni Customer Support personnel can verify that this flash storage is present.
For N1040, N2040, and N4040: The correct software must be present on the USB flash drive. Nasuni Customer Support personnel can determine if the correct software is present.
For N1050, N2050, and N4050: The correct RTNM software must be present on the flash storage. Nasuni Customer Support personnel can determine if the correct software is present.
Ensure that you have all of your encryption keys for the Edge Appliance, in case you perform a recovery procedure for that Edge Appliance after the field reinstallation.

Field re-installation procedure

This procedure can be run from the Edge Appliance console or remotely from the iDRAC virtual console.

To perform the field re-installation procedure, follow these steps:

From the Edge Appliance console or the iDRAC, reboot the Nasuni Edge Appliance.
During the Power-On Self-Test (POST) on the Nasuni Edge Appliance, when the option to press F2, F10, F11, and F12 appears, press F11 to enter the Boot Manager.
From the BIOS Boot Manager, highlight and choose “BIOS Boot Menu” or “One-time Boot Menu”.
When the BIOS Boot selection Menu appears, make a selection based on the hardware appliance type:
- For N1040, N2040, and N4040, highlight “Internal USB”, Cruzer, or Ultra Fit, but DO NOT press Enter.
- For N1050, N2050, and N4050, highlight “Internal SD:IDSM”, but DO NOT press Enter.
Before pressing Enter, read this Tip.

Tip: After choosing the Internal USB or Internal SD as the boot device and pressing Enter, a white splash screen appears with the Nasuni logo and a display counting down from 5 to 0. You MUST press any key before 0 is reached. Otherwise, the Edge Appliance boots from the hard drive instead, and you must start the procedure over from step 1.

Press Enter.
The white screen with the large Nasuni logo appears.

You MUST press any key during the 5-second countdown. Otherwise, the Nasuni Edge Appliance boots from the hard drive, and you must re-start the procedure from step 1.
The internal installer menu screen remains displayed for you to choose the re-installation procedure.

Highlight and select “Reinstall Nasuni Edge Appliance version 9.12.5”.
The confirming menu appears.

Highlight and select “Confirm reinstall of version 9.12.5”.
The Edge Appliance reboots. The “Preparing to auto-install” screen appears.

To abort the procedure, press ESC before the counter reaches 0.
Otherwise, to proceed with the re-installation, do not press anything; wait until the counter reaches 0.
The re-installation process begins, and the progress screen appears.
Some Nasuni hardware models support an adjustable COW (Copy On Write) device. On those models, during the “Creating and partitioning disk” step of the installation process, an extra screen appears in order to ask for the chosen COW size.
The default (and minimum) value is generally the best value for most uses. You can accept this value by pressing Enter.

Before adjusting COW size, and for further advice on COW sizing, contact Nasuni Customer Support.
If you have been instructed to increase your COW size by Nasuni Support, the maximum value is 50 percent of the disk size.

The installer returns to the progress screen to complete the installation.
When the re-installation is finished, the time for the installation is displayed in hours:minutes:seconds.
After the re-installation completes, restart the Nasuni Edge Appliance by pressing Enter.