Storage Foundation 8.0 Administrator's Guide - Windows
- Overview
- Setup and configuration
- Function overview
- About the client console for Storage Foundation
- Recommendations for caching-enabled disks
- Configure basic disks (Optional)
- About creating dynamic disk groups
- About creating dynamic volumes
- Set desired preferences
- Using the GUI to manage your storage
- Working with disks, partitions, and volumes
- Adding storage
- Disk tasks
- Remove a disk from the computer
- Veritas Disk ID (VDID)
- General Partition/Volume tasks
- Mount a volume at an empty folder (Drive path)
- Expand a dynamic volume
- Shrink a dynamic volume
- Basic disk and volume tasks
- Automatic discovery of SSD devices and manual classification as SSD
- Volume Manager space allocation is SSD aware
- Dealing with disk groups
- Disk groups overview
- Delete a dynamic disk group
- Detaching and attaching dynamic disks
- Importing and deporting dynamic disk groups
- Partitioned shared storage with private dynamic disk group protection
- Fast failover in clustered environments
- iSCSI SAN support
- Settings for monitoring objects
- Event monitoring and notification
- Event notification
- Configuring Automatic volume growth
- Standard features for adding fault tolerance
- Performance tuning
- FlashSnap
- FlashSnap components
- FastResync
- Snapshot commands
- Dynamic Disk Group Split and Join
- Dynamic disk group join
- Using Dynamic Disk Group Split and Join with a cluster on shared storage
- Dynamic Disk Group Split and Join troubleshooting tips
- Fast File Resync
- Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)
- Using the VSS snapshot wizards with Microsoft Exchange
- Using the VSS snapshot wizards with Enterprise Vault
- Using the VSS snapshot wizards with Microsoft SQL
- Copy on Write (COW)
- Using the VSS COW snapshot wizards with Microsoft Exchange
- Using the VSS COW snapshot wizards with Microsoft SQL
- Configuring data caching with SmartIO
- Typical deployment scenarios
- About cache area
- Configuring SmartIO
- Frequently asked questions about SmartIO
- Dynamic Multi-Pathing
- Configuring Cluster Volume Manager (CVM)
- Configuring a CVM cluster
- Administering CVM
- Access modes for cluster-shared volumes
- Storage disconnectivity and CVM disk detach policy
- Unconfiguring a CVM cluster
- Command shipping
- About I/O Fencing
- Administering site-aware allocation for campus clusters
- SFW for Hyper-V virtual machines
- Introduction to Storage Foundation solutions for Hyper-V environments
- Live migration support for SFW dynamic disk group
- Preparing the host machines
- Configuring the SFW storage
- Administering storage migration for SFW and Hyper-V virtual machine volumes
- Optional Storage Foundation features for Hyper-V environments
- Microsoft Failover Clustering support
- Configuring a quorum in a Microsoft Failover Cluster
- Implementing disaster recovery with Volume Replicator
- Troubleshooting and recovery
- Using disk and volume status information
- Resolving common problem situations
- Commands or procedures used in troubleshooting and recovery
- Rescan command
- Repair volume command for dynamic mirrored volumes
- Additional troubleshooting issues
- Disk issues
- Volume issues
- Disk group issues
- Connection issues
- Issues related to boot or restart
- Cluster issues
- Dynamic Multi-Pathing issues
- vxsnap issues
- Other issues
- CVM issues
- Appendix A. Command line interface
- Overview of the command line interface
- vxclustadm
- vxvol
- vxdg
- vxclus
- vxdisk
- vxassist
- vxassist (Windows-specific)
- vxsd
- vxedit
- vxdmpadm
- vxcbr
- vxsnap
- vxscrub
- sfcache
- Tuning SFW
- Appendix B. VDID details for arrays
Merge foreign disk command
If you remove a disk from the server and also remove it in Storage Foundation and then decide to reattach it to the server as a member of the same dynamic disk group, you need to use the Merge Foreign Disk command. This command reinstates the disk to its old status as a member of its former dynamic disk group on that server.
Note:
Dynamic disks belonging to a Microsoft Disk Management Disk Group do not support the Merge Foreign Disk command.
You also need to use this command if you remove a disk without taking its disk group offline, move the disk to another server, and then attempt to reinstall it in the original server. The command is necessary in this case because the disk has the other server's disk group ID.
In Storage Foundation, this command does not need to be used very often, because if a disk is removed from a computer that has subdisks from a redundant volume (such as a RAID-5 volume or a mirrored volume), the Hot Relocation command automatically rebuilds the missing subdisk on the volume. However, if the hot relocation feature is turned off, you may need this command.
If you have a dynamic disk group with one disk marked as Missing and you revert the remaining disks in the group to basic, the dynamic disk group no longer exists, and the disk marked as Missing also disappears from the VEA GUI. This happens because the information about a dynamic disk group is stored in a database on each of the disks that reside in the group. The dynamic disk group information is no longer available from the disks that were reverted to basic, and the Missing disk is not connected. If you reconnect the Missing disk and rescan, it shows up as Foreign. Now its database is available, but the remaining disks in the group are gone.
More information about removing a dynamic disk from the computer is available.
Note:
Dynamic disks belonging to a Microsoft Disk Management Disk Group do not support hot relocation.
Note:
Dynamic disks belonging to a SAN Disk Group do not support hot relocation.
To use the merge foreign disk command
- Reattach the disk to the original server.
- In the VEA console, do a rescan (select Rescan from the Actions menu). The disk is displayed in the tree with a red X. Its dynamic disk group displays as "Unknown Group."
- Right-click the disk label in the tree view to bring up the disk context menu.
- Select Merge Foreign Disk from the disk context menu.
- After reading the first screen of the Merge Foreign Disk wizard, click Next to continue.
- In the Merge Foreign Disk wizard screen that appears, select the disk that you want to merge.
Using the Add option, move it from the left pane of the screen to the right pane and then click Next to continue.
- In the next screen, click Next to continue if the data condition on the disk is Healthy.
The final screen of the Merge Foreign Disk wizard appears.
The volume condition types are shown below:
Failed
Volume is not functional. Volume will be merged, may be unusable.
Failed Redundancy
Volume contents are not current. Volume will be merged.
Missing
Volume does not have a subdisk on merged disks.
If the volume condition type is Failed, there is no guarantee that the data is intact (though it may be).
If the disk is Missing, make sure that it is properly connected.
- Click Finish to complete the process of merging the Foreign disk into the server.
The merged disk should now appear as it was before it was removed from the server. It should now be shown as being in its former dynamic disk group.
- If the disk still has an error symbol, right-click the disk and click Reactivate Disk from the context menu that appears.
The disk now should appear as normal.
Dynamic disks belonging to a Microsoft Disk Management Disk Group do not support the Reactivate Disk command.