BAD BAD CLUSTER - NEED TO REMOVE and RESTART - Some Valued Opinion

Hello everyone
Base setup for your info:

2 x Node Cluster Win2k3 SP1
Each Node has "Veritas Storage Foundation" installed and configured. This
application was to make basic disks into dynamic, integrate into the cluster,
allow you to change disks on the fly, increase, decrease size, ect! It does
other stuff, but in my opinion and experience, its been a HUGE HUGE
nightmare!!!!
The disks are created from a HP EVA SAN Based Solution - Currently each node
acts as a FILE SERVER and hosts 8 disks.

PROBLEM: Need to remove the cluster and rebuild. BIG PROBLEM: The Veritas
Storage Foundation Software appears to have made a "signature" on these disk
volumes. It means, that they cannot be presented to any other windows server
system, unless we install the Veritas software on another box!

We DONT want this software - its been the clusters problem all along, and I
need to get shot of it.

Trouble is, does anyone have any experience of this product, more so, is
there a way to "release" these disks so that a bog standard Win2k3 Server can
see the disks and treat then as just disks that contain data. At the moment,
when these disks are presented to any other server, they are known as Foreign
and Windows wants to blat them

As they contain TB of data, its not an option.

WORSE CASE: Create brand new disks from my EVA, basic, restore data from
backup tapes (which is long and hard, but can be done). Dont want to try this
just yet. Hence, any opinions are welcome.

I am sure the Veritas product is good ... in my professional view.... trying
to make a basic disk into dynamic and making it sing and dance is not what I
wish to achieve.

And whats wrong with Diskpart - something I have used all the time and will
continue to use to change my disk size.

Cheers
Simon

 

Simon,

I understand the pain.... and I have experienced some "interesting" behavior
with Veritas on Clusters as well, and to-date, uninstall Veritas was
definitely my preferred solution for these mis-behaviors. MSCS can only take
basic disk for clustered disk resources.

You are facing a dillema, not really signature related, but you are having
dynamic disks created by Veritas, and you want to move to basic disk, so
here goes

If you have a "Simple DynamicVolume" which is a dynamic volume on one
physical disk, you can convert back to basic, without data-loss.

If you have a "Mirrored Dynamic Volume" which is 1 dynamic volume, mirrored
on two physical disks, you can convert back to basic.

If you have any other form of dynamic disk, such as "Spanned volume" or
"Striped volume" you can NOT convert back to basic.

Although you can convert some dynamics; I would strongly recommend you
commission new disks from your storage, and do a data-migration. Just for
the fact that you will start with fresh new NTFS basic volumes for your
cluster.

It is a bit of pain to go through, but if you carefully plan, with help of
your storage vendor to help you with the commission of new disk and
migration of data, you probably will benifit of a more stable system in the
long run.

Rgds,
Edwin.

 

Simon,

be carefull with terminology here, I do not think this is a problem with
"disk signature" as Microsoft's definition of this. I do believe however
that this is a problem with the LDM database (as written to the last 1MB of
the disk, just outside the partition boundary).
This database holds the information for the dynamic disks. Although similar
as standard Microsoft dynamic disk, there are distinct differences in the
Veritas LDM database, especially in the terms of "Dynamic disk group names".

Not as simple for clustered nodes, but on standalone systems, if you remove
Veritas, and your OS sees the disks as "Foreign" that means that the OS
recognises the disk as being dynamic. You can right-click and import them as
microsoft dynamic disks.

If they are not listed as Foreign but listed as "New" or "unallocated", then
I would suggest to involve Microsoft PSS to investigate how to bring back
those disks (and data !) into your system. This probably involves
"dmdiag.exe -v" and "dmpss.exe". The first one is a reporting tool, the
second one is a tool experts use to fix LDM problems on dynamic disks. Do
not try to run dmpss.exe yourself, as you can loose all data permanently, if
you are not careful !

Still, I think your best option is to present new (basic) disks, do a data
migration (obviously Veritas need to be installed, you need to copy data
from the Veritas dynamic volumes to the basic disks) and bring the new basic
disks into your cluster.

Rgds,
Edwin.

 

Hi Edwin
Yes the terminology in regards to the signature, is what is written to LDM.
But in all honesty, if its going to be easier to migrate these disks onto new
basic disks and restore all data from a good tape backup, so be it !

Without sounding negative..... is there people that actually used this
product in a clustered environment (I know it supports clustering, as its
licensed for it!)

Cheers, simon

 

yes, I have used it, and I have uninstalled it.
My personal experience is not so good with this product.

Rgds,
Edwin.

 

My experience with this product has been absolutely blissful. I love using
it with clusters and it makes data and SAN Migrations a breeze. I have not
been faced with the need to ever remove it up to this point. I wish ALL my
customers SAN attached servers had this installed. Truely, I do !

I have more than 80 clusters, but fewer than 30 have VSFW. I am in the midst
of a massive migration from old Symmetrix frames, to new DMX frames.
Sometimes we have to robocopy to new disks, other times we use EMC's
OpenMigrator. But I simply LOVE doing the veritas clusters. Its such a
breeze, and my disks offline in fewer than 5 seconds, and come online just
as quickly.

- NuTs

 

Obviously, it is a personal thing. For myself, I would never recommend it to
a customer. I am a stout believe in keeping things as simple as possible,
and thus easy to support.


--
Russ Kaufmann
MVP - Windows Server - Clustering
ClusterHelp.com, a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner
Web http://www.clusterhelp.com
Blog http://msmvps.com/clusterhelp

 

You might be the first person I've ever heard make this statement
(enjoying/recommending VSFW). I personally would avoid it at all costs. It
makes troubleshooting cluster issues more difficult and impossible to
interpret cluster logs without assistance from the vendor.

Regards,
John

 

Hi Nuts / John / Russ
Firstly for Nuts ... you really MUST be nuts!!!! Seriously, this is a
TERRIBLE terrible product! In fact, after visiting the Symantec Forums, its
absolutely amazing just HOW much trouble this application causes.

And once you extend a disk with the VEA, you are totally reliant on this
software.

I am with Russ and John - Keep your clusters as SIMPLE as possible - why
make a Basic disk Dymanic? The fact is, Basic disks is all you need, and you
can use diskpart to extend it.

But if you are pleased with the product, then good for you ... .as for me
and many other people.... you either love it or hate it ... and for the cost
of the software, I could implement better solutions and put the money to
better effect.

Thanks, Simon

 

Yah, Im NUTS like fox ...

You are correct about your volume dependency on VEA once you create them ...
unless you check the option to keep them compatable with Windows Disk
Managment while creating your dynamic disk group. The only place (where i
work) that i have seen any kind of issue with that has been during
discussions about virtualization. The fact is, the servers I have that use
VSFW arent the kinds of boxes you would want to virtualize anyway, so it
really not an issue for us at all.

- NuTs

 

Hi Nuts
Thanks for the reply - Although I can apprecaite your liking for it, there
does clearly seem to be a problem - I do not believe I am the only one that
appears to have been caught out, but in anycase, what I am in the process of
doing is creating new basic disks, outiside the scope of VEA and eventually
restore the data back to them and remove the disks that are part of the disk
group in VEA.

Hopefully should solve the problem. We also do virtual clusters, and as part
of a test, created an identical cluster config with the VEA, and found we
still had similar issues. I am not sure why this product was in use, because
it has only added an extra layer of complexity behind what should be .. a
simple file cluster

Thank you for your time
Simon