Urgent Issue with Windows 2003 and Spanned Volume 1

[itsp1965]

Folks this is a cross-post hoping someone can she some light on an issue I am having. Recently had created a Windows 2003 spanned volume from SAN Disk 10x20GB LUNS. The Volume is created fine and formatted accordingly. I have assigned a drive letter to it drive E:, but everytime this server is rebooted, I lose the drive letter assignment and I have to manually add it back. Does anybody know as to why this occurs. I haven't been able to find anything useful on the MS website regarding this. Thanks.

Regards

Terry

 

[jjjon]

Terry,

I'm sure I came across something similar to this before with Dynamic disks - I think it was something to do with invalid entries in the logical volume db for dyn disks. There is a dump util/command that will allow you to look at this db, but sorry, can't remember what it's called, but MS could help here.

Sorry if my relocation of my issue isn't the best, and this leads you astray from your own problem.

J

 

[itsp1965]

Thank you for the response jjjon. I tried contacting MS Support but of course our premier support contract had lapsed (trying to get it re-enabled). I'll look into it deeper based on your input.

Regards

Terry

 

[jjjon]

Terry,

I believe DMDIAG was the util I used before.

J

 

[itsp1965]

Thanks J, I have seen some of the sample output but I don't exactly know how it is going to solve my problem in this case. Was the situation you had similar to mine? Please advise. Thanks.

Regards

Terry

 

[jjjon]

Terry,

I believe it was something similar - was a fair while ago now. After using the dmdiag util was able to tell that the logical device DB was corrupt. I got around the issue by creating a single SAN volume, initialising as BASIC, and copy from the dynamic disk.
In general, I'd stay away from dynamic disks when possible. I don't know what your SAN storage array is, but if you are able to extend at that level, no real need for dynamic disks.

J

 

[itsp1965]

Thanks J, the problem is I was allocated 10x20GB LUNs on our SAN by our storage folks. In order to create a volume of 200GB out of this, the drives would have to be dynamic and the volume has to be spanned.
I found this article on the JSIFAQ website;

When you use dynamic disks to create logical volumes by striping or spanning, in a SAN environment, you may experience the subject behavior.
This problem is caused by the host bus adapter miniport driver not reporting storage devices to the server in time.
NOTE: If the volumes don't eventual come online, you can use a Diskpart.exe script to do it manually.
Contact the SAN vendor to insure that the firmware, drivers, and configuration are current and correct.
NOTE: Your event log may contain:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: dmboot
Event Category: None
Event ID: 2
Date: MM/DD/YYYY
Time: HH:MM:SS
User: N/A
Computer: <ComputerName>
Description: dmboot: Failed to start volume Volume3 (no mountpoint)

I guess I have to keep chasing until I come up with a valid solution