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12291
October 14th, 2008 14:00
Virtual disk expansion
I added four new hard drives to the existing 8 on my ax100, and configured 'DISK POOL 1, to include all the 11 disks. One disk is set up as hot spare. I then expanded the 'Virtual Disk 1' to again include all of the 'DISK POOL1'. I expected that the SAN will now show up as one 6TB drive in Win2003. However, it turned out that I need to format the additional 4 disks and set it up as a new partition. I need a 6TB shared drive, not two separate 4TB and 2TB shared drives. I connected another server to the same SAN via the switch, but it too shows the SAN as two distinct partitions.
Is there a non-destructive operation to consolidate all the drives, old and newly added, in one huge partion/disk and see it as such in Win2003? It would be a pain to make two backups of a 6TB SAN, destroy the virtual disk, recreate a big virtual disk, and at the end restore. Please help. Thanks.
Dev Mgr
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October 14th, 2008 16:00
- Which service pack? (important as only SP1 and later support disks over 2TB)
- What is the current setup in Navisphere Express? (do you have an 11-disk diskpool with a single virtual disk that's the complete (max) size?)
- go to disk management, right click the disk (NOT the partition) and go to properties. Go to the Volume tab and check for the partition table. Does this say Master boot record (MBR) or GUID Partition Table (GPT)?
If your current disk is MBR, your only way is:
- back up your data
- delete the partition
- right click the disk and select to convert to GPT (NOT dynamic)
- create a new partition for the full size
- restore your data
If your current disk is already GPT, back up your data (just in case) and then follow the steps in this Microsoft KB article.
ltnejad
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October 20th, 2008 15:00
Ok, I expanded the volume successfully but now I have a different problem which I am not sure if it is related or not.
This is the configuration now ==> SRVR1<--->AX100<--->SRVR2
In server1 I created a shared directory and [moved] three old directories underneath it. Everytning is OK when the SAN is seen from server1 and the shared directory accessed. But from server2 only the old structure is visible, no newly created shared directory. Why is that? Thanks.
Dev Mgr
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October 20th, 2008 16:00
If you do 'force' this, you'll run into a corrupted filesystem. This could happen the second you reboot one of the servers, but sometimes even sooner (or later).
Think of this scenario: one server wants to use some free space on the disk. As it only knows that it's the only system accessing this disk, it can do whatever it wants with the disk, so it starts writing to the disk. The second server sees this same free space and decides it needs to store a new file and is going to use the exact same disk space, so it starts writing to the same exact area as the first server overwriting part or all of the data that the first server has just written. Now neither server has properly written data on the disk.
In a (Microsoft Cluster Service) cluster the node that owns the cluster group with the disk in it is the only one that can read from or write to the disk in question. The 2nd server would only gain access to the disk if the cluster failed over. If you would want both cluster servers to 'do something', you'd create 2 virtual disks and each have a virtual disk in it's own cluster group (with it's own IP and servername).
ltnejad
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October 22nd, 2008 13:00
Dev Manager,
Thank you for your most to the point and effective replies. I unregistered SRVR2 from my AX100, in Navisphere, but now I get this 'attention required' message:
[There are active connections from host bus adapters that are not registered with the storage system. Please check the connections and register any host bus adapters that need to be registered. Disconnect those that should not be connected to the storage system.]
SRVR1, and the unregistered server, are both connected to a switch. I have to leave SRVR2 connected to the switch because it also hosts Backupexec, accessing FC library (Dell PV). I am hoping that this configuration will help with back up's 'job rate' when backing up AX100.
Should I simply ignore the message, or directly cable SRVR1 to AX100? Thanks.
Dev Mgr
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October 23rd, 2008 02:00
If you're going to leave it (physically) connected, I'd just register it and not give it a virtual disk to get rid of the warning. This helps prevent co-workers that are less familiar with the setup from panicking if they need to check Navisphere Express whenever you're on vacation or so.