Scanner on different system than drivepool

[LindsayCole]

Hello,

 

 I am running scanner on a different virtual machine than drivepool. I want the scanner to be able to connect to drive pool to tell it when to evacuate a drive and such.

 

 Is there a way to link them?

 

Thanks!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Unfortunately, the simple answer is no.

Though, this does depend on the virtualization software you're using, and if you're passing the disks through.

 

HyperV:

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/29-how-to-getting-smart-data-from-hyper-v/

VMWare ESXi:

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/131-how-to-get-smart-data-passed-on-from-esxi-51-host/

 

 

However, regardless of the software, the surface scan will still work, and should absolutely pick up read issues (which will trigger the evacuation, if it's on the same VM).

[LindsayCole]

I am using Hyper V, and as such cannot monitor SMART through on the VM.

 

If I install two copies of scanner, one on host, one on VM, will they talk to each other?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

The hyperV link does cover that.

 

But to clarify, talk? Not really. They don't pass on information between the two instances.

However, you absolutely can do a surface scan of the passed through disks. This will detect issues  reading the disk, just as well if it was running on the host.

But as you've indicated, you won't be able to SMART data.

 

You can run StableBit Scanner on the host as well, and you can get SMART data there. But currently, there is no way to pass this SMART data onto the guest VM.

[LindsayCole]

The hyperV link does cover that.

 

But to clarify, talk? Not really. They don't pass on information between the two instances.

However, you absolutely can do a surface scan of the passed through disks. This will detect issues  reading the disk, just as well if it was running on the host.

But as you've indicated, you won't be able to SMART data.

 

You can run StableBit Scanner on the host as well, and you can get SMART data there. But currently, there is no way to pass this SMART data onto the guest VM.

 Hey Chris,

 

The reason why I wanted to have the two "talk" was to help with drive evacuation. Many times SMART errors can show up, but still have a healthy status on the drive itself.

 

A good example, I had a drive fail overnight last night. The drive began showing SMART errors yesterday during the day (nothing major really- a couple reallocated sectors)- the problem being- I had no way to associate this drive, with the VM it was in as there are 8 1TB drives attached to the VM. I do not know why one it is, inside the VM. Had this been communicated between two copies of scanner, the one on the VM would have indicated to start evacuating the drive. I'm suggesting the communication should happen over LAN.

 

It is also, kind of silly to require the purchase of a second copy of scanner due to this limitation.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Lindsay,

 

Don't get me wrong, it would be fantastic to have that information "sent" to the VM in question. But doing so would require a signficant change to the code, to support something like this. Also, we would have to implement some way to identify the disks properly. 

 

But that doesn't meant that we won't. We would love to, but Alex is the only developer (we are a very small company), so we don't have the resources to "just do it".

However, this has been brought up before, so we are aware of the issue. 

 

As for the license, it is "per machine" and VMs are considered machines. But on the plus note, any license after the first can be purchased at a discounted price. ($15 instead of $25).

But if we do create a version that works much better with HyperV, maybe we can see about selling a special HyperV license that would be more flexible.

[Valerie-MYWHS]

I have 3 machines all on same network.  These are physical boxes and not VM's.  Each can see the other in the drop down when using Stablebit Scanner.  If I have drives on an external usb controller.  In this case 8 discs in the external case.  I move the  external usb box among the 3 machines.  Will they or can they share the scan data or will they each make their own historys and  scan data determinations seperatly?  I am asking this because the same jbod in the box give different results depending on which machine is doing the scanning at the time.  I suspect a bad eSata port on one of the  machines may be giving me false readings and flagging the disk as bad.  Would really like to know if any data is being shared or can be shared.  I read above the answer given for VM's and wanted to know if it applied to physcial machines as well.

 

Thank You,

 

Valerie