Mirror, Mirror On the Wall?

[rokerij]

Hello everyone!
I am a newbie and I am learning as I go. I have been entrusted to take an IBM Netfinity 3000 Server on NT 4.0 and upgrade it to WIN 2000 Server (We are non profit, and only have license for this & Not 2003). I know that we have two hard drives installed and one is partioned out, but I do not know if they are mirrored. We have a secondary server also running NT 4.0 that we use as a file storage/share server, this too has two drives.

>Is it possible to mirror two drives on two different boxes?

>How do I go about determining if the drives are in fact mirrored?

>Should I remove the mirroring before the upgrade?

>If, yes, to above, how do I remove the mirroring?

I have found another thread here mentioning it, but I could not quite understand all of it. I thank you all in advance for taking the time to read and/or respond. Thanks again!


S.C. Albertin
Database Administrator/Newbie Tech
United Way

Help me to find my way, so that I may help others find theirs...

 

[pmonett]

I can answer a few of your questions :
1) mirroring has to take place in the same machine on disks of the same size -> you cannot mirror different size disks and certainly not in different boxes (that would be more like clustering).
2) mirroring options are normally found in the BIOS on boot-up. You need to watch the boot process and find the prompt that allows you to set RAID parameters - you should find mirroring in there.
3) I believe not, but if you do you will have to format both drives.
4) In the BIOS parameters, remove all RAID sets.

There are more knowledgeable people here who will certainly bring much more detail to answer you satisfactorily, but I hope this helps for starters.

Pascal.

 

[opalized]

Mirrors are good, that bascally means if one drive fails the system continues to boot and run with a warning a drive has failed, where by allowing you to insert a new drive, reconstruct teh mirror and never miss a beat, so simply upgrading the mirror set and os you have would be youre best choice, the os wont even know its being layed down on 2 drives, since as stated above most mirror sets are constructed prior to windows being installed on any good unit. Using windows mirroring capabilities works fine as well, but not the prefered mirror set in my opinion.
good luck

 

[rokerij]

Thanks! I will look a bit more into the BIOS and I believe that the two drives are of different sizes, so my first thought there is not a mirroring going on. I appreciate both of your help and guidance. Thanks again! Enjoy your day.

S.C. Albertin
Database Administrator/Newbie Tech
United Way

Help me to find my way, so that I may help others find theirs...