Forum Discussion

skia's avatar
skia
Level 2
10 years ago

MS Cluster Storage migration problem

Hi guys,

Could you please help me with storages migration problem.

We have some WinServ 2003 clusters in our company and now we have a task to migrate our old SANs to the new ones. The best way we imagined as solution is to create 2 dynamic DG in Veritas SF: one for old SAN disks and another for new SAN disks, then join these groups into one DG, then make a mirroring between old and new disks and in final do the split of this common DG to 2 independent DG (one with old and one with new disks).

You know that MS cluster can use only basic disks as storage resources. Therefore we can't add these disks into the DG in storage foundation. So, is there any solution here or not?

business continuity
Clustering
Storage Foundation for Windows
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    10 years ago

    Correct you will need to delete disk resources from MSCS as you need to replace with VMDg resources so process to upgrade to dynamic disks will be something like:

    1. Install SFW on inactive node with MSCS option
    2. Offline cluster resource group
    3. Delete disk resources in MSCS
    4. Upgrade disks to dynamic to create a Veritas diskgroup
    5. Add VMDg resource to MSCS
    6. Online cluster resource group on what was the inactive node
    7. Install SFW on what was the active node with MSCS option
    8. Test failover back to active node

    You will probably want to create Quorum disk using SFW too - see "Deploying SFW with Microsoft failover
    clustering" section in "Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions Solutions Guide" for more information

    Then you can go through steps to migrate to new array.

    Mike

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    MS Cluster can indeed use SF Dynamic disks as resources.
    See 'Microsoft Clustering support' in your version of SFW: http://sort.symantec.com/documents 

    To migrate to new storage, the steps are in short:
    Add the new disks to same DG, mirror volumes to new disks, wait for mirrors to sync, then remove source disks from DG before removing from server.
    All of this can be done with cluster resources remaining online.

  • skia's avatar
    skia
    Level 2
    10 years ago

    Hi Marianne,

    Are you sure that WinServ 2003 Cluster (not 2008) can use dynamic disks as cluster resources?

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Yes - Have a look at SFW Admin Guide for your version (you have not told us yet).

    Extract from SFW 5.1 MP2 Admin Guide:

    Overview of support for Microsoft Clustering
    You can use Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows to manage storage for a
    cluster set up for Microsoft Clustering. For Windows Server 2003, Microsoft
    Clustering is available with Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) software. For
    Windows Server 2008, it is available as the Failover Cluster feature.

     

    The above section in the manual goes on to explain how to create Dynamic Diskgroup(s) for use with MS Cluster.

  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    To be able to use Dynamic Diskgrous with MS Cluster, you need to have a licence for the MSCS option for VMDg which effectively provides a DLL for MSCS to use so that you see an extra VMDg resource type that you can use in MSCS to create resources that control SFW diskgroups

    If you are currectly using basic disks you will need up upgrade to dynamic disks before adding mirror and then steps are:

    1. Add disks from new array to SAME diskgroup as disks from old array
    2. Create Mirror of volumes on the old array to the new array
    3. Delete the mirror on the old array
    4. Remove disks on old array from your diskgroup

    As Marianne says, all this can be done online (but you cannot upgrade to dynamic disks online)

    Mike

  • skia's avatar
    skia
    Level 2
    10 years ago

    Hi mikebounds,

    you are right - we need to add basic disks into dynamic DG, but while these basic disks are Online as cluster resorces we can't do this. You can check it yourself. So, we need delete these disks from cluster resources at first (not only take them Offline). 

  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Correct you will need to delete disk resources from MSCS as you need to replace with VMDg resources so process to upgrade to dynamic disks will be something like:

    1. Install SFW on inactive node with MSCS option
    2. Offline cluster resource group
    3. Delete disk resources in MSCS
    4. Upgrade disks to dynamic to create a Veritas diskgroup
    5. Add VMDg resource to MSCS
    6. Online cluster resource group on what was the inactive node
    7. Install SFW on what was the active node with MSCS option
    8. Test failover back to active node

    You will probably want to create Quorum disk using SFW too - see "Deploying SFW with Microsoft failover
    clustering" section in "Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions Solutions Guide" for more information

    Then you can go through steps to migrate to new array.

    Mike