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Create a Disk for VCS on Windows

Michelle_Lai
Level 4
Hi All,

Can someone please show me an example of a list of steps (command lines) to create a shared disk  and to make it ready for VCS on Windows? For some reason, in my VCS I can only use the MountV and VMDg resource types. The Mount resource type is missing. I used to do it on UNIX but it seems there is another set of command on Windows.

Thanks in advance!

Michelle
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Wally_Heim
Level 6
Employee
Hi Michelle,

SFW-HA does contain VCS but it includes the resources to work with SFW and not basic disks.  Where VCS for Windows does not include the resources to work with SFW but it does contains the ones needed for basic disks.

You have not mentioned what version of Windows you are using or exactly what version of SFW-HA that you are using.  I'm going to assume that you are using 5.1 SP1 (the newest version currently available.)

If you are using Widnows 2003 and these are new disks you will need to write a signature to the disks before you can use them.  In VEA, if you expand the tree view on the left so that you can see all of the disks under the "Disk" folder you should see "(No Signature)" after the disks (if this is the problem.)  You can write a signature to the disks by right clicking on them and selecting "Write Signature" then follow the wizard.  After that you should be able to create disk groups on them.

If you are using Windows 2008, new disks are presented as "Offline".  You will need to "Online" the disks in either LDM or VEA.  Then you will need to write a disk signature to the disks with the same steps as Windows 2003 above before the disks will be available.

If you are still having problem, you might want to open a case with Symantec Technical Support.  We are staffed 24x7x365 to assist with customer issues.

Thanks,
Wally

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7 REPLIES 7

Wally_Heim
Level 6
Employee
Hi Michelle,

SFW-HA has the VMDg and MountV resources for dynamic disks because it includes SFW but does not include DiskRes and Mount resource.

VCS for Windows does not include SFW so it has the DiskRes and Mount resources for basic disks but does not the VMDg and MountV resources.

It sounds like you may have SFW-HA installed but you wanted/expected VCS for Windows.  You can confirm this by going into Add/Remove Programs to see what the name is for the product that you installed.  If it is SFW-HA and you really wanted VCS for Windows then uninstall and install VCS for Windows.

If you want to use VCS for Windows then you need to simply create partitions on the basic disks and format them as you would if VCS for Windows not installed at all.  You should make sure that a drive letter is assigned to the volume on a single server at a time.  Otherwise, filesystem corruption can occur.  Once the cluster is configured the cluster resources will automatically take care of drive letter assignments on the nodes as needed.

If you SFW-HA is what you really want then you need to create a Clustered Disk Group and add volumes to the disk group.  This can be done via the CLI or the GUI.  The Solutions guides will show you how to do this via the GUI.  But the CLI commands can be found in the Admin Guide but will take some time workout the exact syntax you need based on what you are doing.

The service group configuration wizards will create the service group with the correct resources for the product that you have installed.  There are also sample configuration files in the %vcs_home%\conf\ folder that you can look at.

Thanks,
Wally

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified
In all honesty - GUI's are much easier with Windows...

Commands are covered in Appendix A of the Volume Manager Admin Guide:
https://vos.symantec.com/public/documents/sf/5.1SP1/windows/pdf/SFW_Admin_51SP1.pdf

Creating a diskgroup is covered on p.579 onward.

To create a volume (vxassist) is covered from p. 613 onwards.

Michelle_Lai
Level 4

Thanks a lot, Wally. I have an install of SFW-HA but not VCS. But VCS is still available, I think it is part of SFW-HA. It is just the DiskRes and Mount resources are missing. All I need is a shared disk to be configured on VCS. Therefore I think both SFW-HA and VCS can do it.
I think my real problem is, when I try to use the VEA GUI to create a dynamic disk group, the hard disk is not showing in the "Available disks" list in the "New Dynamic Disk Group Wizard" Window, though the hard disk is listed in the Disks folder under StorageAgent of the system. Also the disk device is shown in "Computer Management" -> "Device Manager" -> "Disk drives". Do you know anything might be wrong or should I check any configuration? I am using the "IBM DDYF-T36950R SCSI Disk Device" from the SAN.

Thanks,
Michelle

Michelle_Lai
Level 4

Thanks for the information, Marianne.

I have updated my situation in the previous reply. Please advise. Your help would be very appreciated!

Wally_Heim
Level 6
Employee
Hi Michelle,

SFW-HA does contain VCS but it includes the resources to work with SFW and not basic disks.  Where VCS for Windows does not include the resources to work with SFW but it does contains the ones needed for basic disks.

You have not mentioned what version of Windows you are using or exactly what version of SFW-HA that you are using.  I'm going to assume that you are using 5.1 SP1 (the newest version currently available.)

If you are using Widnows 2003 and these are new disks you will need to write a signature to the disks before you can use them.  In VEA, if you expand the tree view on the left so that you can see all of the disks under the "Disk" folder you should see "(No Signature)" after the disks (if this is the problem.)  You can write a signature to the disks by right clicking on them and selecting "Write Signature" then follow the wizard.  After that you should be able to create disk groups on them.

If you are using Windows 2008, new disks are presented as "Offline".  You will need to "Online" the disks in either LDM or VEA.  Then you will need to write a disk signature to the disks with the same steps as Windows 2003 above before the disks will be available.

If you are still having problem, you might want to open a case with Symantec Technical Support.  We are staffed 24x7x365 to assist with customer issues.

Thanks,
Wally

Michelle_Lai
Level 4
I am using SFW-HA 5.0 on Windows 2003 Server. The disk is "online" but is marked as "No Signature". I have tried to write signature to the new disk however it failed with a dialog "Failed to write the disk signature". Using diskpart to make the disk read\write does not help. I think I am going to open a case for this. Thanks for all the help!

Wally_Heim
Level 6
Employee
Hi Michelle,

It sounds like you don't have write access to the lun.  You may need to get your SAN team to take a look to ensure that you have both read and write access to the lun that you are working with.

Thanks,
Wally