Any best practise for windows 2008 R2 Mirroring volume...

[MM_StephanP]

Hi all,

We are testing Windows 2008 R2, and storage foundation 5.1 SP1, but we have a lot of problem with mirroring system drive (volume C).
First, when installing W2K8 R2 a system volume catch the boot table (MSR ?).
When creating a mirror of my volume C, I mirror also this partition.
But in case of drive faillure, we have problem with disk group : unabled to had the drive two MsGroupe/DG0.

These tests are under VMWare, and should be done under physical machine later.

I hope i'm not the only one having these problem, and hope for a best practise helping us.

Thanks, and sorry for my english (so poor).

[Marianne]

I hope one of the Symantec experts will reply to this. Looking at the SFW Admin Guide, it seems mirroring of W2008 boot disk is not (yet) supported.

Extract from SFW Admin Guide:
p. 68:
Note: On Windows Server 2008, SFW does not manage the dynamic boot and system volume. For more information about a dynamic boot and system volume, refer to the Windows Server 2008 documentation.

The procedure in this section only covers W2003.

p.246 under "items to consider when you plan to mirror a dynamic boot or system volume":
If you decide you want your system to boot from the mirror, make the necessary change to the boot.ini file on a system running Windows Server 2003. For Windows Server 2008, refer to the Microsoft documentation for more information.

[Wally_Heim]

Hi MM_StephanP,

The 5.1 SP1 Admin guide has a note that is slightly different than the 5.1 GA Admin guide has that Marianne referenced.

Page 61 of the 5.1 SP1 SFW Admin Guide has this note:

Note:OnWindows Server 2008, although you can create and manage the dynamic

boot and system volume using the SFW VEA console, the native Windows driver

handles the input/output operations for that volume. Therefore, ensure that you

comply with Windows Server 2008 information on best practices and restrictions

on the use of a dynamic boot and system volume.

 
I'm looking into this matter to see what I can find.  I'll post back when I have more to go on.

Thanks,
Wally

[Wally_Heim · Accepted solution]

Hi MM_StephanP,

I've set this up in VMWare Server with two 30GB disks.  My OS was installed on SCSI0:0 and my other disk is on SCSI0:1.

I installed Windows 2008 R2 and SFW 5.1 SP1. 

I upgraded the disk that has the C: (OS) drive to dynamic and added in my secondary disk.

I then added a mirror of the C: drive to be on my secondary disk and allowed them to fully synchronize.

When the resync process was done, I shutdown the server.

In the VMWare server console, I removed the original OS disk that was assigned to SCSI0:0.

When I rebooted I was presented with a boot menu that asked which copy of Windows to boot into ("Windows Server 2008 R2" or "Windows Server 2008 R2 - secondary plex".) 

I selected "Windows Server 2008 R2 - secondary plex" and hit enter. 

The server booted as norm/expected.

I'm not able to reproduce any erors or problems with this process.  Can you please go into more details on what you are doing and what errors you are getting? 

Thanks,
Wally

FYI - Keep in mind that the Boot and System drives/volumes must be in a Windows compatible disk group in order to mirror them.  This means that you are limited to the funcationality of Windows Disk Manager and not by SFW on what you can do to these disks/volumes.  It also means that even if SFW is uninstalled your server will boot.

[MM_StephanP]

Thanks Wally,

In my case when I install Windows 2008 R2, the setup create two volumes :
   - One volume about 100 Mo, without any letter assign which contain the boot table.
   - One volume (c:) which contain my system.

I create a Windows compatible disk group, an add mirror to both volume.
I remove the original OS, and boot on the second one without any problem.

When I represent the original disk, I have problem to add it to the Ms Disk Group.
I have a "missing disk" and a disk without any volume.

If I "Reactivate" the missing disk, I've got the error :
    Error V-40-49408-42 : An interface with the unique identifier specified does not exist for this object.


Thanks for your answer and your help.

[Wally_Heim]

Hi MM_StephanP,

I was not able to find any Microsoft KBs on how to deal with this.  I did find a third party forum post that pointed to destroying the mirror and recreating it to fix the problem using disk part/LDM.

The SFW manual does not cover Windows Compatible Disk groups.  But for SFW Dynamic disk groups (non-boot/system disks), a rescan will automatically reactive the volume and kick off an automatic mirror resync.  This did not happen when I rescanned the server in this case.

I'm able to get this going on my test server by doing the following.  Assuming that you

1. Remove the mirror plex that is missing from the c: drive.
2. Remove the missing disk from the dynamic disk group.
3. Add disk to disk group selecting the replacement/new disk.
     (in my case I reverted it to basic which caused a boot problem that I resolved by changing the order of the disks on the SCSI bus.)
4. Recreate the mirror.

If you have problems with this on a production server, please open a support case and we will work with you to resolve this issue.

Thanks,
Wally

[MM_StephanP]

Hi,

Thanks.
After a lot of action, I recreate the mirror, but when rebooting, I now have 3 lines :
   - Windows Server 2008 R2
   - Windows 2008 R2 - plex 2
   - Windows 2008 R2 - plex 2

As we realize, some failure simulation twice a year, after some years i will have a lot of choice !!!!
Definitly not a solution for us. I'll contact MS for a solution.

Thanks.