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 :) 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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