Expanding Windows 2000 and 2003 Basic Disks on EMC Symmetrix Systems

Applied Technology

Abstract

This white paper outlines the process of expanding storage system LUNs. You must extend the Symmetrix® volume, and then use the Microsoft tool Diskpart to extend the Windows 2000 or 2003 file system. This enables online growth of Windows 2000 and 2003 basic disks—without an impact to applications.

December 2008

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Part Number H729.3

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Table of Contents Executive summary ............................................................................................4 Introduction.........................................................................................................4

Audience ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Hardware expansion procedures ......................................................................4

What is a Symmetrix metadevice (metavolume)? ....................................................................... 5 Procedure for expanding a concatenated metavolume ............................................................... 7

Concatenated meta example ................................................................................................... 7 Procedure for expanding a striped metavolume.......................................................................... 8

Overview of striped metavolume expansion process............................................................... 8 File-system expansion procedures .................................................................14

Extending the basic disk volume................................................................................................ 14 Best practices for expansion in Windows environments..............................16

Service pack requirements ........................................................................................................ 16 Basic disk versus dynamic disk ................................................................................................. 16 Application considerations ......................................................................................................... 16 Microsoft Cluster Server considerations .................................................................................... 16

Conclusion ........................................................................................................18 References ........................................................................................................18

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Executive summary Customers using EMC storage products and Microsoft operating systems want their storage to grow online without disruption to their file systems, applications, and databases. They want to allocate new storage to hosts as needed, reclaim new storage without having to reboot, and allow for online, scalable growth. In addition, the systems administrator needs to be flexible and anticipate changes in his/her IT infrastructure. Many times, the initial storage allocation is not enough for the growing demands placed on the storage system. In a Microsoft environment, this is unacceptable—everything must be flexible and configurable. This white paper presents ways in which your storage can be much more configurable, flexible, and scalable.

Introduction The procedure in this white paper will walk you through the process of expanding storage system LUNs on the EMC® Symmetrix® platform. Once you’ve expanded the LUNs, you will need a Microsoft tool called Diskpart to extend the Windows 2000 or 2003 file system so that Windows can see the additional space. One significant benefit this paper explains is the ability to extend Windows basic disks, giving the customer more choices when discussing their scalability strategy. In the past, the only option was dynamic disk, which represented a learning curve and a challenge for many storage administrators. Now you can have your basic disk, and grow it too.

This paper discusses:

• Hardware expansion process • File-system extension process • Overview/screenshots of the entire environment • Requirements for this procedure • Best practices This paper discusses the results of our collaborative studies with Microsoft operating-systems specialists and EMC storage design engineers. We have engineered a process to grow your storage online without a reboot, with zero application downtime. The system will remain online, the data on the volume will remain intact, and the operation of the user's applications is not interrupted. The procedure is designed to work with basic disks, so there is no need to learn about this new type of disk or upgrade to dynamic disk just to achieve a modicum amount of scalability. Dynamic disks represent a considerable architectural change to their standard disk format and as a result, many systems administrators are having difficulties working with dynamic disks (refer to KnowledgeBase article Q317587).

Audience This white paper is intended to serve as a reference for customers and EMC employees. Customers will gain a fuller understanding of this process. EMC employees who may be able to benefit from the information in this paper include system engineers, professional service consultants, implementers, customer engineers, and internal EMC audiences.

Hardware expansion procedures This section describes the steps involved in using EMC Symmetrix striped metavolume expansion to extend the size of a Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 basic disk volume. Expanding NTFS file-system capacity without the need for rebooting the server is important to maintaining high system availability in today’s business environments.

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What is a Symmetrix metadevice (metavolume)? A metadevice consists of two or more devices connected together logically and presented to the host as a single addressable device. Typically, a Symmetrix hypervolume (or logical volume) is created from existing physical disk space. A metavolume allows you to combine existing hypervolumes devices to form a larger metadevice. Figure 1 provides a better understanding of this concept.

Figure 1. Formation of a metavolume The metahead is the first device in the metadevice. The metahead handles all command processing and manages the distribution of I/O requests and the synchronization of metamember and metatail processing activities. Data layout in a concatenated metadevice continues to the end of the first device (metahead) before any data on the next device is added.

Figure 2. A concatenated metadevice on four physical disk spindles

A metavolume may also be “striped” for better performance than concatenated metavolumes. A striped metadevice is one that places data on metamembers in user-defined stripes or chunks instead of filling an entire device first before addressing the next device. The stripe size (or chunk size) is the amount of data addressed on one device before moving on to the next device in the metadevice.

Figure 3 illustrates a striped metadevice consisting of a hypervolume from each of four physical disk spindles that also include three unrelated hypervolumes. Equal-size stripes of data (for example, 1920

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blocks) are written in sequence to the metahead and each metamember. When a stripe has been written to the metatail, the sequence of writing stripes begins again at the metahead.

Figure 3. Striped metadevice on four physical disk spindles

With random I/O, striping data across multiple disk drives benefits random reads by avoiding the stacking of multiple reads to a single spindle and disk director. All patterns of I/O access are random across all members of the striped metadevice.

With sequential I/O, when there are many sequential I/Os pending, striping causes data to be uniformly spread out. All the Symmetrix disk spindles associated with members of the striped metadevice are employed to improve I/O throughput.

Striping is unrelated to data protection. Striping is simply a method of placing data on members of the metadevice to enhance performance.

How to create metavolumes The following command file entry creates a concatenated metadevice using device 030 as the metahead and devices 031, 032, and 033 as the metamembers:

form meta from dev 030, config=concatenated; add dev 031:033 to meta 030;

If the devices that form the metadevice are mirror-protected (for example, two-way-mir type devices), then the metadevice is protected. All members of the metadevice must have the same type of mirror protection.

The following command forms a striped metadevice, specifying a stripe size of 1920 blocks (which can also be specified in cylinders as 2 cyl). This is the recommended stripe size and the default when no size is specified.

form meta from dev 030, config=striped, stripe_size=1920; add dev 031:033 to meta 030;

When you form a striped metadevice, EMC currently recommends that you add all members in the same session rather than forming an initial metamembership and adding more members later. Adding members after the initial metadevice contains valid data requires a decision on whether to preserve the existing data. If you need to preserve the data, you need to include the protect_data option and the bcv_meta_head option, specifying the name of a BCV metadevice that matches the original metadevice in capacity, stripe count, and stripe size. For example:

add dev 034 to meta 030, protect_data=true, bcv_meta_head=090;

The preceding examples illustrate how you select the metamembers of a metadevice. However, it is also possible to have the configuration server select the metamembers by including a metacount option that specifies how many devices to select to form the metadevice. From a pool of unmapped devices, the configuration server selects devices with attributes and size that match the specified metahead. The following command requests the configuration server to form a metadevice with four metamembers: the metahead (030) and three other members selected by the configuration server. Stripe size is two cylinders.

form meta from dev 030, config=striped, stripe_size = 2 cyl, count=4;

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Creating metadevices is a multistep process. For example, creating a RDF metadevice requires three steps: creating devices, forming a metadevice from these devices, and then converting the metahead device to an RDF device.

Procedure for expanding a concatenated metavolume Before expanding a concatenated metavolume, you must meet the following prerequisites:

• To expand SRDF® volumes, you must first remove the RDF attribute. • For SRDF R1/R2 pairs, you must perform the configuration on R1 and R2 devices. • SYMCLI version 5.0 is required (Configuration Manager CLI). • Use Symmetrix 8000 and Symmetrix DMX™ series. • When configuring metadevices, the devices must be unmapped. • Metamembers cannot be removed from a striped metadevice. • To create a striped metadevice, all members must be the same size and have the same mirror

protection. • To remove a member from a concatenated metadevice, the member must be the tail. You cannot

remove inner members. • Only the head of a meta may have its type converted. • Only the head of a meta is mapped or assigned to the host. • All metas must contain at least one metamember. When a meta is formed, at least one member must be

added. • All metadevices must consist of devices of the same BCV type (you must convert from RDF devices in

order to change metas). • Metadevices must consist of devices that are all of the same FBA emulation type. • You must create CKD metadevices using the create dev command, not the form dev command. • VDEV metadevices must consist of virtual devices that are of the same capacity, stripe size, count, and

emulation type as the standard devices with which they will be used.

Concatenated meta example Concatenated metavolumes are fairly simple to expand. Simply place a configuration file with the expansion text in a file, and call it out. In this example, you would create a text file called Concat.txt. In this file, you specify the following commands.

To form a concatenated metadevice 0010, type:

form meta from dev 0010, config = concatenated;

To add metamembers, type:

add dev 0011:0012 to meta 0010;

To run the command on Symm #56, type:

symconfigure -sid 56 -f concat.txt commit -v

Once you’ve created a concatenated metavolume, you can later add to it, remove devices, and dissolve the entire metadevice.

Dissolving striped or concatenated devices will lose access to data. Adding to concatenated metadevices preserves the metadevice data, but makes the new members’ original data inaccessible. Removing concatenated members will lose access to the data on the removed member. Use these commands with great caution.

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Procedure for expanding a striped metavolume Before expanding a striped metavolume, you must meet the following prerequisites:

• If you want to preserve data, the BCV metavolume must be the same size and configuration as the standard.

• It is strongly recommended that a mirrored BCV be used to protect the data during the expansion. This guards against possible data loss in the event that a drive containing one of the BCV metamembers fails either during the reconfiguration of the standard meta or during the copy of the data from the BCV back to the standard meta.

• To expand SRDF volumes, you must first remove the RDF attribute. • SYMCLI version 5.0 or later is required (Configuration Manager CLI). • Symmetrix 8000 and Symmetrix DMX series only. • Use microcode levels 5567 and later (expansion is not supported in 5569). • For SRDF R1/R2 pairs, you must perform the configuration on R1 and R2 devices. • When configuring metadevices, the devices must be unmapped. • Metamembers cannot be removed from a striped metadevice. • To create a striped metadevice, all members must be the same size and have the same mirror

protection. • To remove a member from a concatenated metadevice, the member must be the tail. You cannot

remove inner members. • Only the head of a meta may have its type converted. • Only the head of a meta is mapped or assigned to the host. • All metas must contain at least one metamember. When a meta is formed, at least one member must be

added. • All metadevices must be composed of devices of the same BCV type (you must convert from RDF

devices in order to change metas). • Metadevices must consist of devices that are all of the same FBA emulation type. • You must create CKD metadevices using the create dev command, not the form dev command. • VDEV metadevices must consist of virtual devices that are of the same capacity, stripe size, count, and

emulation type as the standard devices with which they will be used. Check with your EMC team for more information.

Overview of striped metavolume expansion process Expanding a striped metavolume requires the following tasks:

• Running system verification using SYMCLI, symcfg list, and symconfigure verify commands.

• Selecting the metavolume, BCV, and metadevice; entering into the configuration file. • Running the symconfigure command and pointing to the configuration file. • Verifying completion of hardware capacity expansion. • Using Diskpart to extend the disk partition into the new space. The following steps describe each task:

1. Run system verifications using the symconfigure verify, symcli, symcfg list, and symdev show commands, as shown in Figures 4-6. This will double-check that all requirements have been met. In Figure 7 on page 9, you can see how Meta Configuration = Striped.

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Figure 4. Verifying a configuration change can take place

Figure 5. Verifying the SYMCLI version

Figure 6. Verifying the Microcode version

Figure 7. Verifying your device is a striped metavolume

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2. Open the Computer Management MMC, click Disk Management, and view the disk that you want to

extend. For example, in Figure 8 we will concentrate on Disk 2. This disk is the transaction log of a SQL database that is currently active. Disk 2 is appropriately labeled “TransLog-1” and is mounted as the F: Drive. This drive must be mounted in order to complete.

Figure 8. Disk Management before expansion of the SQL Transaction Log Volume

3. Open a blank Windows command prompt by selecting Start > Run > Accessories. If the SYMCLI binaries are in the path, type symcfg discover to refresh the Symmetrix configuration database. Otherwise, navigate to the location of the SYMCLI binaries and enter symcfg discover from there. Once the database has been updated, enter sympd list to find a listing of the Symmetrix devices that are assigned to your host system.

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Figure 9. Choosing the appropriate device numbers with SYMPD LIST

In this example, we will be using PHYSICALDRIVE2, which is a metavolume containing Symmetrix devices 000 and 001. We will be adding device 018, which is another 500 MB volume. A BCV configured just like our 000 metavolume is also required for this procedure If you are unsure of what metavolume to use, run the symdev list -meta command. The command will show you valuable information, including: ! Symmetrix device number ! Windows physical drive number ! Symmetrix volume type (two-way mirrored, unprotected, RDF1, BCV, and so on) ! Striped or concatenated metavolume configuration ! Stripe size if a striped metavolume ! Number of hypervolumes contained by the metavolume ! Total capacity in MB

4. Select a metavolume, BCV, and metadevice and reference them in a configuration file. In this example, our configuration file is named metaext_2.txt. This file has the following contents (no blank lines):

add dev 18 to meta 000, protect_data=TRUE, bcv_meta_head=030; If more than one device will be added, use the following syntax1: add dev 18:22 to meta 000, protect_data=TRUE, bcv_meta_head=030;

5. Run the symconfigure command and point to the configuration file, as shown in Figure 10:

symconfigure -sid 56 -f metaext_2.txt commit -v

6. Execute this command and wait. Your time to complete depends on many factors and may take several hours to complete depending on the amount of Symmetrix cache, number of disk adapters, size of the volumes, and the level of other Symmetrix activities taking place at that time.

1 Devices in the multiple devices scenario above (first dev:last dev) must be consecutive in order to successfully add them into the metavolume 000.

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Figure 10. The complete symconfigure configuration change session

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Figure 11. Verifying the change with SYMPD LIST

7. After the configuration change session has completed, review your disk devices and see what kind of changes have taken place. First, look at the Symmetrix-only view—the sympd list command (Figure 11) will show the devices as they should be presented to the host. It says that PHYSICALDRIVE2 is now 1547 MB (compared to 1031 MB in Figure 9 on page 11)—indicating the change took place successfully.

In the Disk Management screenshot (Figure 12), you will notice a new unformatted partition that is appended to the end of the partition you want to extend. This is not a mistake; you will still need to extend the file system to make the TranLog-1 volume stretch across the new 500 MB of space. To do this, we will be using Diskpart.exe from Microsoft.

Figure 12. Postmetavolume expansion on Trans Log Volume (Unallocated Space)

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File-system expansion procedures

Overview of Diskpart Diskpart.exe is a utility from Microsoft that enables file-system extension. Diskpart provides a CLI for many of the features that Microsoft did not originally want to release with the Disk Management MMC. These features include dynamic disk upgrade, disk cleaning tools, and file-system extension. This paper focuses on the file-system extension features.

Once you have expanded a hardware disk (refer to “Hardware expansion procedures” on page 4), you will need to use Diskpart in order to recognize and use the new amount of disk space at the end of the disk. In order to extend a volume, you will need to first select the volume, and then enter extend size=x, where x is the amount of space you want to add to the existing partition.

For Windows 2000, the tool is available for free at the Microsoft Resource Kit Tools download page:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/new/diskpart-o.asp

For Windows 2003, the tool is included in the base operating system.

Diskpart enables disk expansion for both basic and dynamic disks.

Extending the basic disk volume The second part of the process required to add capacity to a basic disk volume involves extending the basic disk partition and file system. For this task, use the DISKPART utility from the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit or DISKPART included within Windows Server 2003. Locate the volume to be extended using hot disk or the list volume command. The volume is selected and the extend command is issued against the volume to increase sizes of both the basic disk partition and NTFS file system. You can extend by a certain size noted in megabytes (specified with a size=n), or you can extend to the end of the partition.

Figure 13 is an example of a SQL transaction log being expanded online while transactions continue. First, we start up Diskpart, select a volume, and expand it by 500 MB.

Figure 13. Diskpart extends Volume 4 (TransLog-1) from 1028 MB to 1522 MB

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Figure 14. Disk Management after metavolume expansion and file-system extension

You have grown your file system to account for the new space. In Figure 14, Disk Management sees the extra 500 MB. In Figure 15, our SQL 1018 MB transaction log volume now sees about 500 MB more space.

Figure 15. SQL Enterprise Manager reflecting the increased space

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Best practices for expansion in Windows environments

Service pack requirements • Windows 2000 basic disks need SP3 at a minimum. • Windows 2000 dynamic disks need SP4 at a minimum. • Windows 2003 basic disks do not need a service pack. • Windows 2003 dynamic disks do not need a service pack.

Basic disk versus dynamic disk This procedure was created for the user who wants to be able to expand their existing disk capacity without requiring dynamic disks. Dynamic disks are a new component since Windows 2000 and have caused some confusion over how the disk is now handled. While some confusion remains, EMC has fully tested basic disks and dynamic disks, and they will allow for expansion under the same conditions. The only requirement is that you must first be at the minimum service pack level to safely expand the dynamic partition. For Windows 2000, the minimum service pack is SP4. Also the syntax of the Diskpart command (expand = size n) will change slightly for dynamic disks.

Application considerations Before beginning this process it is highly recommended that you obtain a full backup of the metavolume you will be expanding. This is to ensure data preservation in the event of a two-stage (rolling) disaster. This expansion can take place while your application remains online. With that said, it is always safer to take a planned outage to allow this process to complete than to keep the application online. It is a balance between the amount of time it will take to complete the expansion, the value of your data, and the amount of time that this expansion process will save you. Best practice is to wait until an idle period before beginning the expansion process, or take a planned application outage.

Terminal Services for Windows 2000 Terminal Services has difficulty performing mounts and unmount commands in the same Terminal Services session. Terminal Services is unique in that it cannot be completely controlled by an alternate user, like true emulation packages such as PC Anywhere and VNC. Best practice is to not use any remote control software during this process and instead perform the entire procedure at a directly connected monitor. If you must use remote control software, choose one that will allow control of the actual console. The Remote Desktop Connection for Windows 2003 allows for true console emulation and should not be avoided.

Microsoft Cluster Server considerations This procedure is also supported under Microsoft Cluster Server. Performing this procedure in a clustered environment is more process-critical than a non-clustered environment. We recommended using Microsoft procedures in order to extend the Partition of Cluster Shared Disk resource. This technique is available in KnowledgeBase article Q304736, and can be implemented in the following supported Microsoft manner:

1. Back up the shared disk (or disks) that that you want to extend.

2. Power off all but one node in the cluster.

3. Take offline the entire group in which the physical disk resource is located. Bring online only the physical disk resource that is to be extended. This process should close any open handles to the disk.

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Add the additional physical drives and extend the additional disk or disks as free space by using the instructions that are included with the hardware vendor documentation.

4. Select All Programs > Administrative Tools > Computer Management, and then start the Disk Management console. Verify that the new free space is added to the end of the proper drive. Right-click the existing partition, and then click Properties. On the General tab, type a unique name for the partition. This name will be used to identify the partition you want to extend in Diskpart.exe. Quit Computer Management.

5. At a command prompt, type DISKPART, and then press Enter to start Diskpart.exe.

6. Type LIST VOLUME, and then press Enter to display the existing volumes on the computer.

7. Type SELECT VOLUME <volume number>, and then press Enter, where <volume number> is the number of the volume that you want to extend. Note that the volume will have the unique name that you created in step 5, and will have been listed in the output of the command you ran in step 7.

8. Type EXTEND, and then press Enter to extend the partition into all of the available disk space to the end of the drive.

9. Type EXIT, and then press Enter.

10. Now that the volume has been extended, you can bring the entire group that contains the physical disk resource online, and then power up all of the other nodes in the cluster.

11. Verify that the group can come online and fail over to all other nodes in the cluster.

For more information on this procedure, refer to KnowledgeBase article Q304736. A few other items to note:

• You must be logged in as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent you from completing this procedure.

• You can extend a volume only if it does not have a file system or if it is formatted using the NTFS file system. You cannot extend volumes formatted using FAT or FAT32.

• You cannot extend a system volume or boot volume.

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Conclusion Customers using EMC storage and Microsoft operating systems want their storage to grow online without disruption to their file systems, applications, and databases. This white paper discussed ways in which your storage can be much more configurable, flexible, and scalable.

References The following documents are available on Powerlink:

• EMC CLARiiON Best Practices for Fibre Channel Storage white paper • EMC Solutions Enabler Symmetrix Array Controls CLI Version 6.4 Product Guide The following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles can be found at http://support.microsoft.com:

• Restrictions on Extending or Spanning Simple Volumes on Dynamic Disks (Q225551) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q225551

• Dynamic Disk Configuration Unavailable with for Server Cluster Disk Resources http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q237853

• How to Extend the Partition of a Cluster Shared Disk (Q304736) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q304736

• How to Disable the Upgrade Basic Disks to Dynamic Disks Functionality in Windows 2000 (Q317587) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q317587

• Error Message Occurs When You Start Disk Management After Extending a Hardware Array http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=327020

• Extending Hardware RAID Array May Cause Dynamic Unreadable/Offline Error http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;294244

• HOW TO: Expand the Boot Partition During a Windows Server 2003 Upgrade http://support.microsoft.com/?id=325857

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