EVA 5000 & Business Copy

[CA1240335]

I have a problem with Business Copy 2.3 in a Windows 2000/2003 environment. It seems to come down to this:-

I can create a job to snap a LUN & present it, with a drive letter, to a W2K3 server running the host agent.

The problem is that if I try to snap 2 LUN's and present them to the same host the job fails, claiming that the second drive letter can't be assigned. (Obviously, the drive letters are different.)

I have also tried performing the same task with 2 seperate jobs, and the second job will fail with the same error.

This seems like a reasonable request, even if it is a Windows server.

[Uwe Zessin]

It's the same problem as if you would try to present the snapshot to the same server where the parent volume is mounted: both disks have the same signature!

[Urban Petry]

If I understand Dilbert correctly he tries to present different LUNs and not the same LUN twice, e.g. server A works with VDISK1 and VDISK2, then snapshots are created and server B should be presented VDISK1-SNAP and VDISK2-SNAP. Is this correct?

What types of disks are you using? Basic or dynamic disks? And originate the two "source" VDISKs from the same server or from two different ones?

Urban

[Sheldon Smith]

I think we will need some clarification:

Question: "...if I try to snap 2 LUN's and present them to the same host..." -- Is "same host" the host where the 2 LUNs normally live, or do you mean just a second host?

Question: "...and the second job will fail with the same error." -- Will the second job work if the first job is NOT run?

[CA1240335]

OK, I can see it was misleading.

I have one Win2K3 host, say a database server, with "logs" & "data" volumes presented.

I can snap either logs, or data, and present to a new host.

However, I can't do both logs & data, as the job fails with the "drive already in use" error.

[CA1240335]

oh yes, they are Dynamic disks, but would this matter?

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

There is a hint in the Network Administration Guide (checked V2.2 + V2.3) that only Basic disks are supported and you are not supposed to present cross- version (e.g. original on W2000, snapshot presented to W2003).

[CA1240335]

Thanks Ewe, I'll check this out.

If this proves to be correct, it does look as though Business Copy is not the greatest piece of s/w the world has ever seen.

Any thoughts on how else to schedule this sort of operation?

HP promote this product to enable non-intrusive backups, etc. I don't really want to sit around in the office in my pyjamas every night manually making snapshots and presenting them to servers.

[Uwe Zessin]

I'm not a Windows admin, but I thought that a dynamic disk needs to be "imported" on the destination server before it can be used.

A dynamic disk can be made of multiple virtual disks, but on the EVA you cannot snap multiple VDs at once, so there is always a small window of inconsistency.

[Uwe Zessin]

Sorry, here is a link with some background info I intended to put after the first paragraph:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q222189