I've been having a similar issue. After several calls to HP they sent me this command list (using PDID 12 as an example). When step one errors out run it again with the '-dr' flag. Take note of the degraded chunklets and run step two against each of them. After running against all the degraded chunklets step one has kicked off fine.
Steps to Remove/Replace a PD:
Code:
movepdtospare -f -vacate -nowait 12
movech -perm -ovrd 12:0
showpdch -spr 12
removespare 12:a
dismisspd 12
admithw
tunesys
Again - the movech had to be run against each chunklet reporting degraded. Luckily, I only had two on this PD.
My best guess (and it is a guess) after talking to a different 3PAR tech is that in my case the degraded/remote_disks_used means that a disk on a different node was required.