Hi Phil,
The issue is a physical one and will require a physical solution,
ie, the move of the data.
You want to minimise overhead and downtime so here is a method I
use with some migrations. Unfortunately you will have to incur the
overhead of an additional LUN and its requisite space. If
your environment is a large data warehouse or similar SQL environment then this
may not be viable as typically there are a small number of large files.
One of the better ‘free’ tools to my mind is Robocopy.
There are a number of similar tools, however I find Robocopy very easy to
script and it has some useful features. As an aside, with additional
executables such as tail/head for Windows you can write some quite useful
command language scripts.
If you create another LUN/Drive then you can immediately start
to seed it. If you want to slow the copy to prevent impact overhead then
you can use the /IPG switch, with retry switches set to ‘0’ to
immediately bypass in-use files (use ‘1’ if you want them logged).
If you were in a 2008R2 environment then you would also want to reduce thread
use (/MT:1, for instance).
Even if you have to update daily for a few days prior to say a
weekend slot, then you may be in a position to have a very short downtime as you
switch drives after the final sync.
Hopefully not tedious at all J Probably
not the answer you want to hear, however good luck.
Regards,
Neil
From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net
[mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Philbert Rupkins
Sent: Saturday, 8 June 2013 3:54 a.m.
To: toasters@teaparty.net
Subject: Fixing LUN Misalignment on Physical Machines
Hello Toasters,
I found a ton of information regarding fixing misalignment
issues in virtual environments. However, I am interested in
how to resolve misalignment on a physical machine. The only way I
am aware of is to create a new LUN and perform a host based copy of the data to
the new LUN. Is this my only option or are there any other methods
that require less overhead/downtime?
Here is the situation:
Server OS = Windows 2008 Server
LUN Type = Windows 2008
Partition Type = MBR (W2K3)
How did we get a W2K3 MBR partition out of a Windows 2008
server? We didnt. The LUN was originally created by a W2K3
machine while using an EMC storage array. The W2K3 server
was eventually retired and the LUN was presented to the W2K8 machine.
The LUN was then migrated to a NetApp array using a
block for block mirror of the data from the EMC LUN to the NetApp
LUN. Unfortunately, the NetApp LUN was created as a
windows_2008 lun type because it was going to be used by a Windows 2008 server
- this is where the mistake was made. So now, we have a
Windows Server 2008 box with a disk using a 2003-MBR partition type on
windows_2008 lun type.
Again, I'd like to fix the misalignment issue in the easiest
way possible. Creating a new lun and performing a host based copy of the
data is doable but requires a fair amount of overhead. Just
wondering if there is a more efficient way to resolve lun alignment issues with
physical machines.
Thanks!
-Phil
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