NetApp

NetApp Data OnTap 7 and Flexvolumes

The Saturday (July 16th) was spent on migrating an Exchange cluster from an older NetApp 840 to a new 920 filer. My personal experience with NetApp’s Exchange solutions – from the older filers that used NetApp’s VLD protocol to the newer iSCSI filers – has been a string of hit or miss affairs. The Windows […]

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SnapDrive 3.1 requires 3 hotfixes (2 avail only from PSS)

Want to upgrade NetApp SnapDrive 3.x to 3.1? You’ll need 3 hotfixes, 2 of these cannot be downloaded from microsoft.com. You need to call Microsoft Product Support Services for these : 1. KB838894 – An updated Storport storage driver (version 5.2.3790.173) is available for Windows Server 2003 2. KB831112 – [Call PSS] You cannot import […]

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Running 3-4 node cluster on iSCSI

Clusters with more than 2 nodes using iSCSI storage are not officially supported by Microsoft or NetApp. Yet. Probably being tested in labs. Added 3rd node to my cluster. Failed over Cluster, MSDTC and Exchange groups successfully! Wolfpack (that’s what the cluster is called..) is now truly a pack of wolves! (The nodes are called […]

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NetApp Volume Fails To Mount After Power Outage

A power outage (are rolling blackouts back in California??) earlier in the morning, and the resulting mess. The new cluster (Windows 2003/Exchange 2003) with NetApp’s iSCSI filer came up happily. The older one (that uses NetApp’s older VLD protocol) failed. Issues: L: drive (Storage Group 1, Logs) would not connect/map, so Exchange Group in cluster would […]

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NetApp SnapManager for Exchange (SME) Restore takes Physical Disk offline

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with NetApp’s SnapManager for Exchange (SME) backup utility. To restore a store, SME needs to take the Physical Disk resource offline. (Actually swaps it with the volume/LUN that has the backup). When this happens, the Exchange System Manager (and thereby the entire Exchange Virtual Server) goes down – because […]

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NetApp’s VSS Provider looks for “non-existent” file versions in KB833167

When you try to install the NetApp VSS Provider (to connect iSCSI filers to Windows Server 2003), you need to install Hotfixes from KB833167 and KB824354. You install the hotfixes. Then install the VSS Provider. And here’s what you get – Incorrect version of the following files was detected. Please install Hotfix Q833167. Esent.dll version […]

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