Local pagefile and boot to SAN

[Ed Cox]

Quick scenario:
BL35 booted to SAN with a local ATA drive for the pagefile. Since the local ATA drive is not RAID protected and it happens to die, how does this impact the 2003 OS currently running on the SAN?
Thanks,
Ed

[Robert S. Carr · Accepted solution]

Ed:

A couple of ideas to share:

1) Put a small (2MB+) pagefile on the SAN and the rest of the partition on the IDE drive. Microsoft recommends you do this because if the server crashes and there is NO pagefile on the boot partition Windows will not be able to create a crash dump file should a Kernal STOP mode error occur. The crash dump file is useful should the STOP require a debug to be performed.

2) Add more memory. With more memory, Windows caches less so there is less chance that should the IDE drive fail, nothing critical will be stuck in the cache.

My experience with this problem is this. On bootup, if the ATA drive is already in a failed state Windows will take it's time waiting for the faulty drive to come 'alive' but eventually give up and write to the default location--the windows boot drive. Once a pagefile has been created, Windows will continue to use that. This may not be what you want since fragmentation is likely.
I can't recall if subsequent bootups are slow but if the drive fails, check the pagefile location to ensure it is not on the failed drive.

If the drive fails after bootup, results are hard to predict. The typical sign is extreme slowness as Windows attempts to read or write to an unresponse drive. The machine may even crash. Although on bootup, Windows will create a pagefile somewhere else and you can then make adjustments as required.

Microsoft's advice on pagefiles:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=197379

[Ed Cox]

Excellent info Robert...Thanks!
Ed