Moving stripe set w/ parity

[Kevin Hogan]

Is it possible to move the drives containg a stripe set with parity from
one server to another, and still have access to the data residing on
them. These drives will only contain data, the OS will be on a fourth
physical drive. The servers will be running small business server 4.5.

[Bill Blomgren [MS]]

Kevin:

Moving the stripe set with parity is -possible-...but will require great
care. You will also need FTEDIT from the resource kit to record the
partitioning information. Do the systems have the same SCSI adapter? If
not, there will probably be problems.

Now for a few questions:

1) How many drives total on the 2 systems? 4 total? If so, you -may- be
able to save the disk key from the donor machine, restoring it to the new
system.

2) Are the drives in the same domain? You may have problems with the sids
and ACLs on the drive.

If you have a good tape system, doing a thorough backup first is
required... And may be required to get the data back in good shape if
things don't work out well. You should probably consider this as your
primary solution, with the attempt at a simple move as a quick testing
procedure to avoid the restore process. However, that restore process
-may- be needed, especially if the scsi adapter is significantly different.

Let me have more information to continue.

Bill Blomgren
Microsoft Platforms Support

[Kevin Hogan]

The scenario would be two machines, each with their own hard drive and OS(SBS
4.5) installed. I would then like to use 3 additioanl drives as a single
stripped set w/ parity, and be able to move these 3 drives between machines if
needed. The second machine is really just a spare that would sit in the closet,
until needed.

[Fabian Gramer [MS]]

This not really a viable disaster recovery solution. Keeping a spare
machine is sound, but to hope to restore a former stripe set to a system to
have quicker access to it's data has too many gotcha.

I would recommend having the drives on hand, but relying on a strong backup
policy to be able to restore live data and OS config from tape

Thanks,
Fabian Gramer
Microsoft Technical Support

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Message-ID: <384822F6...@hrcorp.com>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 14:07:18 -0600
From: Kevin Hogan <kho...@hrcorp.com>
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