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Giroevolver's avatar
Giroevolver
Level 6
15 years ago
Solved

Windows 2008 and VMFS Netbackup 7

Hi Guys,

 

Quick question. I have added a new media server and am looking to use it as my VMware backup host. It is a windows 2008 server running netbackup 7.0.

When i present the VMFS LUNs to the OS they are showing as Offline healthy Primary partitions in disk managment. On my 2003 backup host they show as healthy unknown partitions.

 

does anyone know if this is just a change in the way disk manager see's the VMFS luns?

 

screen shot attached.

 

thanks in advance!

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  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    15 years ago

    From the FAQ:

    The GPT disk partition format is well defined and fully self-identifying. Data critical to platform operation is located in partitions and not in unpartitioned or "hidden" sectors. GPT disks use primary and backup partition tables for redundancy and CRC32 fields for improved partition data structure integrity. The GPT partition format uses version number and size fields for future expansion.

    Each GPT partition has a unique identification GUID and a partition content type, so no coordination is necessary to prevent partition identifier collision. Each GPT partition has a 36-character Unicode name, which means that any software can present a human-readable name for the partition without any additional understanding of the partition.

     

    The whole article can be read from : http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/gpt_faq.mspx

9 Replies

  • teiva-boy's avatar
    teiva-boy
    Level 6
    15 years ago

    Just please, please do NOT write any signature or initialize those VMFS disks.  That is a great way to break VMFS and all guests on that LUN.

     

    If you've done the normal automount disable and automount scrub, then presented the LUN's, you are done.  And things should be working as intended.

  • Giroevolver's avatar
    Giroevolver
    Level 6
    15 years ago

    I know not to write any signature to the disk. I am already running this in 2003 and know how to set it up. My question is about the 2008 disk manager showing the partition as offline health primary partition as this has not been the case in 2003. 

    Surely someone is running the Vmware backup host on windows server 2008 and tell me this.

     

    Pretty please :)

  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    15 years ago

    My guess is Windows 2008 recognize Linux/VMware partitions. But as I said, only a guess.

  • Giroevolver's avatar
    Giroevolver
    Level 6
    15 years ago

    Unfortunatly a guess is not good enough when most of your servers are running on VMFS that you could potentially corrupt :)

     

    anyone else?

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    15 years ago

    Hi Giroevolver

    on a User forum you will at best get 'user' viewpoint/experience/guesswork unless we can find documentation that we can refer to.

    It seems that the documentation that you need does not exist (yet). It will probably be best if you log a support call with Symantec.

    All of us will be interested in their response!

  • RiaanBadenhorst's avatar
    RiaanBadenhorst
    Level 6
    15 years ago

    Since you're only interested in the changed manner that the O/S sees the luns, you should maybe address your question to Microsoft. NetBackup doesn't really care what the status is, as long as we can access it :)

  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    15 years ago

    From the FAQ:

    The GPT disk partition format is well defined and fully self-identifying. Data critical to platform operation is located in partitions and not in unpartitioned or "hidden" sectors. GPT disks use primary and backup partition tables for redundancy and CRC32 fields for improved partition data structure integrity. The GPT partition format uses version number and size fields for future expansion.

    Each GPT partition has a unique identification GUID and a partition content type, so no coordination is necessary to prevent partition identifier collision. Each GPT partition has a 36-character Unicode name, which means that any software can present a human-readable name for the partition without any additional understanding of the partition.

     

    The whole article can be read from : http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/gpt_faq.mspx

  • AbdulRasheed's avatar
    AbdulRasheed
    Level 6
    15 years ago

    RE: When i present the VMFS LUNs to the OS they are showing as Offline healthy Primary partitions in disk managment. On my 2003 backup host they show as healthy unknown partitions.

     

    This is normal for Windows 2008.  It is a safetly net to protect LUNs in SAN.

    When using NetBackup for VMware, you do need to mark them as 'online'. This is needed for SAN transport restores where NetBackup VxMS framework directly writes data via SAN to the datastore. If you are not using SAN transport, not action is needed.

     

    Warm regards,

     

    Rasheed

  • Douglas_Snyder's avatar
    Douglas_Snyder
    Level 5
    15 years ago

    Giroevolver,

    A Windows server can only "see" a native disk - namely one that has been formatted with the NT file system or NTFS (or a NFS disk if you are using services for UNIX).  The VMware system uses VMware File System or VMFS which Windows does not recognize.  Each different operating system will handle a "foreign" disk a little differently which is why you are seeing two different descriptions.

    This is nothing to worry about UNLESS you try to mount or format the disk.  As teiva-boy mentions writing a signature (required to mount the disk) will destroy the existing VMFS structure.