Storage foundation & Windows mount point

[stuzc]

Hi,

Can anyone please point me in the direct of any docs or advise relating to he use of windows mount points & Storage Foundation for Windows, is there any value add when using Storage foundation to adminster Windows mount points & would operations manager bring anythink to the party as well?

Cheers

Stu 

[mikebounds]

Windows mount points or Folder mounts are a Microsoft thing - i.e you don't need SFW and so you could mount a partition on a folder in Windows XP.  SFW supports folder mount - see page 135 of SFW admin guide (https://sort.symantec.com/public/documents/sfha/6.0/windows/productguides/pdf/SFW_Admin_60.pdf) and VCS (if you have SFW HA) supports them see MountV agent on page 38 of VCS bundled agent guide (https://sort.symantec.com/public/documents/sfha/6.0/windows/productguides/pdf/VCS_BundledAgents_60.pdf)

The point of folder mounts is it gives more meaning to use folders rather than arbritary letters, so for example, rather than use D:, E:, F:, G: for SQL you could use

d:\sqlinstance1\data

d:\sqlinstance1\logs

d:\sqlinstance2\data

d:\sqlinstance2\logs

Also you are not limited to the 23 spare drive letters.

Mike

[stuzc]

Hi Mike,

Many thanks, however one thing I was after was if SFW made the administrion of WMP any easier or provide better reporting, not what value the mount point its self brought. And to be clear it would be posible to format & present an empty volume / lun in a windows folder not just a folder as a mount? 

Cheers Stu

[mikebounds]

Hi Stu,

Not sure what you mean by the administation of WMP.  You don't really administer the mount point, you administer the volume and I don't think SFW (or MS Windows) makes any distintion between administrating a volume that is mounted on a folder, than a volume that is mounted on a drive letter.  The only think I can think is that you need to administer about the mount point folder is that you need to ensure it stays empty as if the folder is not empty then you cannot mount a volume on it - if volume is mounted at boot, then this is not an issue so only tends to be an issue in a cluster where the folder mount point may be written to on the inactive node.  You can easily script VCS (the cluster in SFWHA) to remove files in this folder if it were not empty which would probably be more difficult in MSCS, but for using WMP in Windows Logical Volume Manager versus SFW, I don't think there is any difference.  Is there something in particular you find difficult to administer, when using WMP.   There are reports in VOM that show free space, but this will make no distinction between volumes mounted on drives or folders.

Also not sure what you mean by "it would be posible to format & present an empty volume / lun in a windows folder not just a folder as a mount".  You can only mount a volume (or partition), you cannot mount LUNs (on folders or drive letters).  So supposing O/S is on a partition of size 10GB on LUN1 which is mounted on C: and you create a diskgroup on LUN2 on which you create a volume called data of size 100GB and mount this on c:\SQL\data.  Then when you write to C:\windows or c:\SQL you are writing to LUN1 and when you write to c:\SQL\data you are writing to LUN2.  If you format  c:\SQL\data,  then this has not effect on the O/S on the LUN1 partition and the space you have availble in c:\SQL\data is 100GB, but in c:\SQL, c:\windows, etc, you will only have 10GB (minus space taken by O/S) available.

Mike

[mikebounds · Accepted solution]

I don't think Veritas Enterprise Adminstrator (VEA) is more intutive for managing WMP than Windows Logical Disk Administrator (LDM), in fact it is probably less intutuive as to change a mount point you have to right click on volumes and choose "Filesystem" and THEN choose "Change drive letter and path", rather than choosing   "Change drive letter and path" first as in LDM and I have had a few customers who found this hard to to find.  With both interfaces you can right click and choose "Explore" and in both interfaces, neither seem to show the folder mount path - I had a hunt round in VEA and I couldn't find a option to show mount path.  What you can do (in both interfaces) is make the label of the volume the mount path as both interfaces shows the volume/partition label.  

I don't believe SFW provides any add-ons to explorer so Explorer will function the same as with LDM.

If you are exploring on local machine then the folder in explorer should be a grey drive icon, rather than a yellow folder and a right click should give you the space details, but it normally shows as a normal folder if you view from another machine like when connecting a network drive.

Mike