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Mohawk_Marvin's avatar
Mohawk_Marvin
Level 6
15 years ago

issue with MSCS

Hi All

I have an issue with Microsoft Clustering and EV8 SP3.

My environment is as follows:
Active/Passive EV FSA server 2 node cluster, and targetting Celerra for the FSA targets.

So on my EV boxes I  need to install the FSA Agent and then run thru the FSA Cluster config to create my cluster resource. Done that and my resource is created.

So now the problem.....

My FSA resource will bring up the 3 services fine, however when choosing to take the FSA resource offline it changes the resource from Online to Offline instantly and looking in the Services console the 3 FSA services (placeholder, collector and blocking) remain running. This impacts me as when I move my group to the passive node I cannot shut down the Admin service (placeholder stays running so directory cant shut down).
Things of note are that my FSA resource does not have any dependencies other than the MSMQ, Data and IIS disks, so no mention of Admin or directory resource, this is odd as I know the placeholder needs these resources. Of course in the event of a total failure (like a reboot) the failover is perfect.

I have removed the agent and resource and reinstalled and recreated the resource still same issue.

There are no errors in eventlogs and a placeholder dtrace contains nothing of value.

Appreciate your thoughts
Enterprise Vault
Information Governance
  • BravoZulu's avatar
    BravoZulu
    15 years ago
    Hi Josh,

    I have a workaround for this issue, but bear in-mind that it may not be suitable for your customer.  Here's what I do;

    1.  On the Dependencies tab of the "<ServerName> Enterprise Vault FSA" resource, include the "Enterprise Vault Directory Service".  This is important when the resource tries to come online (so it doesn't fail).

    2.  Create a batch file (i.e. stopFSAservices.bat) on your c drive with the following line;
    net stop "Enterprise Vault File Placeholder Service"

    3.  Create an event trigger on your EV cluster which responds to an attempted failover (as follows);

    eventtriggers /create /l System /eid 1203 /t INFORMATION /tr TriggerName /ru evserviceaccount@yourdomain.com /rp password /tk "c:\stopFSAservices.bat"

    NOTE:
    You will have to do this on both cluster nodes!

    Hope that helps with the issue?

    BZ

16 Replies

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  • JesusWept3's avatar
    JesusWept3
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    I'm not a cluster or fsa guru at all, however only ev cluster will have a dependancy on msmq and iis, the fsa drivers and such will not as msmq is not used in file server archiving, especially on the file servers however since you are targeting a device as opposed to the file server I'm assuming the place holder service et al is installed on the ev server tbh though if there is nothing immediately obvious in the guides or technotes then your quickest resolution maybe to call support
  • Mohawk_Marvin's avatar
    Mohawk_Marvin
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    All the services install as the Agent gets installed no problem and retrieval etc works.
    Call has been logged with Symantec however as yet they have not produced a solution or a step to progress with, so I thought I would try the forums :)
  • Batmanfail's avatar
    Batmanfail
    Level 4
    15 years ago
    Do you really need to install the FSA Agent on your EV Cluster?  I thought the Celerra DHSM API took care of the placeholder creation and recall via HTTP.   I think the storage service talks directly to the Celerra API.  Try removing the resource and see what happens...

  • Mohawk_Marvin's avatar
    Mohawk_Marvin
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    I do need the FSA Agent installed as I will want to configure FSA Reporting at some point soon, and unless I misunderstand things, I still need the FSA Agent installed somewhere regardless.
  • Batmanfail's avatar
    Batmanfail
    Level 4
    15 years ago
    You can install the FSA Agent on any Windows Server (I believe it's called an FSA Agent Proxy) so you don't have to install it on your EV cluster...
  • Mohawk_Marvin's avatar
    Mohawk_Marvin
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    From reading the Install guide:

    "For NetApp and EMC Celerra file servers, the FSA Agent services that support placeholder shortcuts and FSA Reporting run on the Enterprise Vault Server."

    I have had a quick poke around and all mention of FSA Agent Proxying say something along the lines of that quote, do you have a doc or guide I am missing showing configuration of the agent on another NTFS box other than the EV ones?

  • Batmanfail's avatar
    Batmanfail
    Level 4
    15 years ago
    True.  My bad! 

    Following excerpt taken from Reporting.pdf (pg64);

    "For NetApp and EMC Celerra file servers, an Enterprise Vault server acts as a proxy server for performing the FSA Reporting file collection."

    ...so, back to your FSA resource issue then...

    I take it this is a Windows 2003 MSCS (2 x node Active/Passive)?

  • Mohawk_Marvin's avatar
    Mohawk_Marvin
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    It is indeed Active/Passive 2003 MSCS.

    And the FSA Resource will happily bring the 3 File Services online however, if I elect to shut down the FSA resource, it doesnt take them offline, so when trying to shut down the Admin resource, it cant due to the Placeholder service running. Therefore when the admin service fails to go offline in time... it fails and cluster fails over.

    So what I need/want is for the resource to actually govern the 3 services correctly :)

    As per my first post, I have uninstalled the FSA agent, rebooted, installed the agent on both nodes, rebooted, then run the cluster config to create my resource. All works fine to this point. Then we get back to the issue where the resource does not shut down the 3 services.
  • Batmanfail's avatar
    Batmanfail
    Level 4
    15 years ago

    Did you configure the FSA target with the EV Server Network Name Resource?  If you added the target as one of the nodes or as the cluster name, maybe this is the issue?  Try the target name as the EV Server Network Name Resource instead...

    Also, something to note is that the Enterprise Vault FSA Reporting Web service is not supported on Windows Server 2003 x64 edition...

  • Mohawk_Marvin's avatar
    Mohawk_Marvin
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    Good thinking Batman, sorry been desperate to say it all day.

    Already tried that as well it needs to match the rest of my resource names otherwise it does not work at all.

    Dont forget.. at the moment my FSA Resource can bring the 3 Fil Services online no problem, it just cant take them down even though the resource shows offline.