Disks are Marked Offline After Upgrading to PowerPath 6.0

Summary: Disks are marked offline after upgrading to PowerPath 6.0.

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Symptoms

Some disks are marked offline after upgrading to PowerPath 6.0.

Cause

It is Windows functionality, not PowerPath that makes disks online or offline.

Resolution

The user should run the below in order to get around the offline issue. 
san policy=onlineall

Dell PowerPath and PowerPath/VE Family for Windows Version 6.0 Release Notes gives the disk online or offline behavior as the limitation of PowerPath:  

On Windows Server 2008 and later, disks are marked offline when first added to the host.
The user must manually enable these offline disks before they can be used.
To avoid this issue, run the following command in diskpart, san policy=onlineall.
This command configures the system to leave new SAN drives online.

The default SAN policy is OfflineShared for Windows Server 2008 and later and Windows Server 2008 R2.
It is Windows functionality that makes disks online/offline, and so the limitation above is confusing.

In summary, a pseudo device shows as or comes offline after a physical disk is added and scanned from the host side and PowerPath takes control of it (already existing online disks come as online.)

Additional Information

  • Changing the SAN policy
DISKPART> san
SAN Policy : Offline Shared

Change it using..

DISKPART> san policy=OnlineAll

DiskPart successfully changed the SAN policy for the current operating system.

then list the disks using..

DISKPART> LIST DISK

if any disk shows Offline, select that disk and clear the attributes.

DISKPART> select disk Disk#

Disk# is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY

Disk attributes cleared successfully.

DISKPART> attributes disk
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

DISKPART> ONLINE DISK

DiskPart successfully onlined the selected disk.
  • Changing the Disk status to online through disk management.
POLICY=OnlineAll can be used to setting to get around this, but it must be clear that if the disks are shared among servers, this can lead to data corruption. Users are encouraged to use the proper SAN policy to protect their data.
Article Properties
Article Number: 000171325
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 11 Mar 2024
Version:  3
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