Killed my pool?

[hansolo77]

Ok, so if ya'll have been following my build progress, I just got the new HP SAS Expander.  Previously I had the LSI Controller connected to 2 of my backplanes, and the other backplanes connected via reverse breakout cables.  Since I just got the expander, I connected all the backplanes to it.  Now only the 2 backplanes that were originally connected via SAS are being detected by DrivePool. The other 4 backplanes aren't being detected in DrivePool, but they do show up in Device Manager and Scanner.  I just tried to uninstalled DrivePool and reinstall it, in the hopes that maybe that would rebuild the pool, but that didn't work.  Any ideas?

[hansolo77]

Leave this topic open just in case...

 

I'm a half asleep idiot over here... Windows Server has some kind of built in security feature that puts drives into an OFFLINE state if they are new.  Well, they're not new, just connected using a different interface.  I just opened up my Disk Manager and found them all "disabled".  So I have to go through an turn them on.  Stupid Windows.  I'm also experiencing a HUGE slow down on my machine.  I think I jacked something up in my BIOS when I was trying to reconfigure it to load the OptionROM so I could verify the LSI card was detecting all the drives (which it was).  Now my system takes forever to load, and when it does it runs at a crawl.  I'm going to mess with this later, but for now I think this is my solution.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Yeah, Windows Server wants to default new drives as "offline", and yes partially as a security precaution (though, it's handy for HyperV).

And if you do decide to change anything, make sure you write down the current, working config first.

[hansolo77]

It says it's an administrative policy.  Is there a way to change and/or disable that?  It's very annoying when you're trying to troubleshoot drive issues.  I don't plan on using HyperV, especially since I don't even know what it is.  I just feel like the "automatically offline" is just a needless hurdle.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I think this should fix it:

 

http://www.happysysadm.com/2010/11/disk-is-offline-because-of-policy-set.html

[hansolo77]

Yeah I had come across that tutorial while doing my Googling for a solution.  I'm not sure that will solve the problem though.  It specifically requires you to change the SAN (whatever that is) policy on a per-drive instance.  So it would only work for drives currently connected to the system.  If you add a new drive, it would probably still come up "offline".  It's no big deal, I don't mind it doing that.  It was just frustrating because I forgot Server does that, and I was pulling my hair out wondering why DrivePool was saying drives were unavailable when Scanner was showing them RIGHT THERE.  Lol. 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

SAN stands for "Storage Area Network", but this policy applies to local disks, as well.  Changing the policy would change how "new" disks are handled. Running diskpart and then "san policy=onlineall" should prevent this from happening in the future, as it will default to all disks being online.

 

And yeah, StableBit DrivePool looks at VDS while StableBit Scanner looks at WMI. So it can get different results. (useful for HyperV though)

 

And HyperV... it's for virtualization. Running VMs. Much like VMWare ESX.

[hansolo77]

I don't even know what virtual machines are.  Is that when you have your computer running, but then also have like another system running inside it, like a different OS, but at the same time?  I guess something like that would be useful if you wanted to have a SERVER and a CLIENT on the same exact hardware, or if you're doing a bunch of experimenting with software and stuff but you don't want to risk messing up the stable system.  Is that right?  If so, I don't really have any use for that.

 

Thanks for clarifying SAN for me.  I learn a little bit more about this stuff each day!  I think I'll just keep the setup the way it is.  I don't want to run the risk of screwing something up.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Yup, exactly.  I use it for a few reasons, but mostly testing.

 

 

And not a problem. And no matter how much you know, there is always more to learn.

 

And as for screwing stuff up, set up Windows Server Backup. Backup just the system drive, at least. That way, if you screw anything up, you can restore.  It's saved me more than a few times.