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January 31st, 2008 11:00

mounting snapshots to Windows Server 2003 R2

Server is Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 SP2.
Have Powerpath 5.10 installed.
Navisphere Agent 6.26.0.2.20
Navisphere CLI 6.26.0.2.24

Trying to use a batch file to automate the process of starting a SnapView session, activating snapshots, and then using diskpart to scan the system for the new drive.

There are 3 LUNs presented to the production host which have been converted into a dynamic drive and spanned in Windows.

I'm trying to mount the snapshots of the production LUNs to my backup server to perform a backup of the data. I have to do it this way because the production server is a turn-key vendor solution that I cannot load agents or software onto for mgmt purposes. I can perform the process manually but when I attempt to script it out it becomes very unstable if working at all.

Here is the start script I use in my environment:
naviseccli -h 172.22.3.92 snapview -startsession CentricitySnap -snapshotname CentricitySnapMeta1,CentricitySnapMeta2,CentricitySnapMeta3
naviseccli -h 172.22.3.92 snapview -activatesnapshot CentricitySnap -snapshotname CentricitySnapMeta1
naviseccli -h 172.22.3.92 snapview -activatesnapshot CentricitySnap -snapshotname CentricitySnapMeta2
naviseccli -h 172.22.3.92 snapview -activatesnapshot CentricitySnap -snapshotname CentricitySnapMeta3
"C:\Program Files\VERITAS\Netbackup\bin\sleep.exe" 20
Diskpart.exe calls a simple text script to perform the "rescan" function
"C:\Program Files\VERITAS\Netbackup\bin\sleep.exe" 20
Diskpart.exe calls a simple text script to perform a disk select & online functions
"C:\Program Files\VERITAS\Netbackup\bin\sleep.exe" 20

I've added the sleep commands in there thinking that perhaps everything was happening so fast that commands were walking over each other but so far it hasn't helped.
What could be going wrong? The script will work once, then fail the next time altoghether with varying errors being thrown by Windows.
Help?

2 Intern

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385 Posts

February 1st, 2008 05:00

Can you provide the text of what your diskpart script is doing?

Maybe something has changed, but I know EMC did not support Dynamic disks replicas due to some unstability in that code and the way the disk signature could appear on a clone. This had something to do (going off memory here) with the fact that Dynamic disks are based off a very scale down version of VxVM and are missing a lot of the API calls to allow for seamless disk cloning. Got this both from a Microsoft and an EMC technician and is the reason we had avoided using Dynamic disks.

However, seems odd however that this would work for you from the command line and not from a script.

Do you have any output from one of the executions where it fails?

16 Posts

February 1st, 2008 05:00

I don't have any output from the scripts themselves only the unexpected behavior of the disks after running the scripts.
Basically if I reboot the server and run the script to start a SnapView session, activate the snapshots and then bring them online in Windows it works. I then use a different script to tear down the drive again. If I repeat this process it fails and I'm getting (2) different errors in Windows Event Viewer, they are:
Event ID: 2 - Unspecified error (80004005) from source LDM
Event ID: 10 - Unexpected provider failure. Restarting the service may fix the problem. Error code: 80042420@02000034 from source Virtual Disk Service

Unfortunately for me this system is a turn-key solution provided by an outside vendor and cannot load backup agents or any software onto the system. Need to figure out how to regularly backup the data in a different way.

2 Intern

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385 Posts

February 1st, 2008 06:00

Sorry was not very clear. We ran this restart right before the mount process.

Yes - all basic disk. We were discouraged from using Dynamic disks by EMC. This is slightly dated information (about 18 months old) but unless something changed within Windows 2003 in the latest SP probably still applicable warning.

Our bigger concern was our SRDF replication and possible issues with Dynamic storage more than local replication for our backup process (if that fails on rare occasion not as big of a deal)

30 Posts

February 1st, 2008 06:00

well , I can say that using dynamic disks with the base disk management in windows 2003 will present alot of issues, unless you update to VERITAS foundation suite. just as the previous post mentioned, VERITAS wrote the disk management for Microsoft for windows 2000 and 2003 so you basically are using a free version of VERITAS :)... to get better usability and a better working product for dynamic disks you have you update to VERITAS. I could go on forever about the problems you will see with dynamic disks and how they are more susceptible to connectivity issues on a SAN. you should consider using basic disks and growing your disks in your hardware RAID, and this would be Microsoft's recommendation also. they call dynamic disks "poor man's RAID" and you should only use them when you don't have the ability to use hardware RAID.

I wrote an emc primus article emc93930 that talks about problems with dynamic disks. it is symmetrix oriented, but the problem is in the OS so it would pour over to Clariion or any other vendor.

also see primus emc178895 that I just wrote the other day to tackle issues or discussions like yours. if you can get to either of these on powerlink in the knowledgebase let me know.

2 Intern

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385 Posts

February 1st, 2008 06:00

Hack alert - but this change provided pretty good results for me in our daily scripted backup process. Saw similar things - worked one time then failed the next time:

rem Add for Windows 2003
net stop "Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service"
net stop "Virtual Disk Service"

net start "Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service"
net start "Virtual Disk Service"

Basically bounced these services as part of this script process. I'd still be a little leery about the dynamic disk supportability of your equation...

16 Posts

February 1st, 2008 06:00

At what point do you bounce the LDM services?
Before the mount, after the mount?

Is your environment non-dynamic disks?

thanks for the reply...good info

30 Posts

February 1st, 2008 10:00

go to powerlink.emc.com then click support\knowledgebase search\support solution search , then put in the emc###### KB article numbers and just click search.

16 Posts

February 1st, 2008 10:00

thanks for the reply bencrook.
Did a seach for your primus docs but having trouble finding them.
Where should I go to get them.

2 Intern

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2.8K Posts

February 18th, 2008 01:00

Unfortunatly I'm unable to find your primus via powerlink .. Maybe it's not yet available to cutomers. If I try to open your primus (emc93930) I receive the following output "You do not have access to this solution."

Bencrook could you check the primus ??

Thx :D

2 Intern

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2.8K Posts

February 18th, 2008 07:00

can you please send me the SR number ?? you can easily guess my email address .. simply skip the space between the two parts of my surname .. :D

30 Posts

February 18th, 2008 07:00

hmmm it was set to restricted, i thought i changed that :) i just changed it, give a couple of days to update.

2 Intern

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2.8K Posts

February 18th, 2008 07:00

ThX ! :D

16 Posts

February 18th, 2008 07:00

This has taken on a life of it's own. :)
I now have a case open with EMC and Microsoft and the best part was it took all of 2 replies before the Microsoft "engineer" was blaming EMC for the problem.
I will be picking this back up tomorrow and hopefully get some additional information regarding the issue.

2 Intern

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385 Posts

February 18th, 2008 07:00

We had gone the route of asking MS for the correct answer and the final response they came back with is that you either need to use Basic Disk or use a full blow version of Veritas Volume Manager to handle replication.

I guess our local representatives liked each other - neither company blamed the other just stated the realities of the limitations with Dynamic disk :)

Will be very interesting to see the official response.
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