Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : Win 2003 drive mirror help

[desman]

After some information/advice, using Win 2003 is it possible to add mirrored drive without affecting the state of the server? Meaning it’s a production server now with 50 or so web sites/mail etc when I add the second drive and use Windows built-in mirror software it won’t have an effect on the state of the server and stuff the sites/mail

Or should this only be done on a new server before setting up as a web server.

Thanks in advance

[assistanz247]

It will not affect the existing drive or its data. All you need to do is convert the dirve as Dynamic volume and this will not affect your data.

[sam_cogan]

As long as the drive is allready in the machine or it is hot swap enabled, you should be ok. However if it is not allready a dynamic disk it may require a reboot. There will be some performance impact whilst the drives are resyncing.

[eternals]

You have to take the risk of windows system crash when you convert to dynamic disk. Be sure to backup your important data before performing this.

[desman]

Originally posted by eternals
You have to take the risk of windows system crash when you convert to dynamic disk. Be sure to backup your important data before performing this.

Is it that bad

[boonchuan]

Dun think it is that bad, I have converted hundreds if not thousands of drives to dynamic. Just require a reboot.

[eternals]

When you are about to convert you will be warned. I have tried about 15 times, none has problem also. But who knows, just in case.

[sam_cogan]

yes, normally everything goes fine, just a reboot. But you need to be prepared in case things do go wrong, and if this goes wrong, you can loose all your data.

[desman]

Don't know what to do now, looks like it's a fingers crossed situation

[desman]

All went well

[sam_cogan]

I expected it would, i've never had a problem. But you always have to plan incase the worst happens.

[eternals]

You have to consider whether you are able to take the risk and always plan ahead.

Safest way is to clone it to another hard disk and keep the existing as backup. Even if the process fail you can restore it in shortest period of time without the needs of reconfigure and etc.

[smartins]

I'm also considering converting to Dynamic Disks to have them mirrored but found these comments that are a little disturbing:

"Although software-based RAID 1 mirrored volumes created under Win2K and NT provide redundancy by duplicating the contents of a primary disk to a shadow disk, these mirrored volumes don't duplicate the MBR. However, most hardware-based RAID solutions (e.g., RAID con-troller cards) mirror a basic disk's entire contents, including the MBR. This fact is one of many reasons why hardware RAID solutions are preferable to Win2K and NT's software-based RAID offerings."

From my personal experience. They are not directly bootable by default. You have to issue a command to make the second drive bootable using the boot cds

Also, whenever you have a crash (ie not a proper shutdown). The system resyncs the mirrors during which time the entire performance of the server becomes very sluggish. And do take note that the resync can take hours depending on your setup.

So, anyone that is currently using Dynamic Disks and Mirroring (RAID 1) via software on Windows 2003 can share your experiences about these comments?

Thanks!

[nadtz]

smartins

what you posted is correct. on the average traffic server it wont be a problem, if you are doing anything else you would want a hardware solution anyway for various reasons.