iSCSI San connecting to RM CC3 Users not showing in the management console

[DaveCoop]

Ok Guys could do with some help on this one!

Old CC3 Network no space left, just installed dothill san with 2 ESXI hosts for a new virtual network.

ok no probs here however got i little " Over Confident" and decide to expand the CC3 H:\ for extra space until the new network is fully tested and fully functional. created a link to the san using Iscsi initiator great, drives showed up expanded the user areas to a whole terabyte (lucky pupils) everything fine! had a PAT tester in and dont ask what they did but all the network restarted now i cannot see the user area in RMMC checked disk drives and they had failed on boot used MS tech net article 870964 to specify the drives are server service dependant restart the server still not mapping on loggin.


so any ideas on both problems i have recreated the shares on the H:\ thinking RMMC will see this but to no aval also everytiome i restart the Server the drives fail to map.

thanks in advance guys

[PeterH]

I don't know if you got this one sorted or not, but if not the first thing to do is browse to h:\rmusers\xxx on the server and see if the users home folders are still shared. If not, try restarting the server service and see if the shares re-appear.

I'm a little concerned that your users have simply disappeared from the RMMC. Have you checked that the RMUsers$ share is still present on H:\RMUsers? The H:\RMUsers\Students\Profiles folder should also be shared as RMStudentProfiles and H:\RMUsers\Students\Work as RMStudentWork

If you have problems with drives or shares disappearing when the server is restarted, you have to make sure both your targets AND volumes are persistent:

1. Open the Microsoft iScsi initiator and make sure your targets have the "Automatically restore this connection when the system boots" ticked.
2. Check on the Persistent Targets tab and check that your targets are showing on there.
3. Click on the Bound Volumes/Devices tab and ensure your volumes are persistently bound - if not add them - for example H:\

That should resolve any issues with the iScsi targets and volumes not being available when the server service starts and you should find all your users shares listed if you look in Computer Management | Shared Folders or if you do a NET SHARE at the command prompt

From your description, it sounds like you have simply expanded your H:\ drive so that it spans a locally attached disk and an iScsi disk? I think you are going to have issues with this. I would never recommend that you span a volume across a local disk and an iScsi disk in that way, you are going to possibly suffer from serious data corruption if the iScsi target was to become disconnected - because all of a sudden half your volume would be gone.

It would be better by far to just move the entire contents of H:\ onto the new iScsi volume that you created. It's very simple to do so, and works fine on CC3 (who knows/cares if it's supported by RM?). Briefly, this is how we did it:

1. Setup your iScsi targets and drives (e.g. D,F,G and H are the ones we did) - so these will be visible in Disk Management as for example w,x,y,z
2. In Disk Management, REMOVE the drive letter assignments from the existing volumes (D,F,G and H)
3. Reboot the server (expect errors in the event log after the first boot)
4. Modify the drive letter assignments of the new iScsi volumes to match the old ones (so you've got for example D,F,G and H again)
5. Restore the entire contents of each volume using BackupExec or whatever, I suppose you could also use something like RoboCopy, but BackupExec will also restore quota data as well.
6. Once the restore is complete, enable Quota Management on H: and set the option to deny disk space to users exceeding the quota. Do not tick the Limit Disk usage option.
7. Reboot the server once again and check that drives and shares have appeared as expected and that there are no unexpected errors in the event logs.