I’ve Made A Huge Mistake

I recently had to change SANs and one of the disks you need to move is the Quorum. It’s relatively straight forward. After you change the Quorum to the new disk (remember the new disk has to be online in the cluster), then you’ll then need to stop the MSDTC resource, copy the MSDTC folder to the new disc, then delete the MSDTC resource. Then just simply re-create it.

Changing Quorum Disks

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;280353

Recreate the MSDTC Resource

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301600/

Just for those that can’t find or aren’t aware of how useful these forums are I’m just telling you they are extremly useful. I’m very active in the Exchange community, people are very helpful and I learn quite a bit just from the MVP/MSFT in there as well as other posters. I highly recommend people to check it out and get active, its a great way to learn.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/categories/

Building on a previous post about the importance of aligning your disks, http://almostdailytech.com/?p=13,  how would someone do this. It’s actually not too bad. You use the utility Disk Part which is part of Support Tools.

Enter List Disk, this will display all the disks, locate the new disk you want to align. NOTE this is a destructive process, it will erase any data on it.

Enter Select Disk x (x where that is the disk number)

Enter Create Partition Primary Align=64 (note this is either 64 or 32)

Once this is done the new disk will be intialized as basic. Then you can format and label the drive. To confirm your disk is properly aligned, you can use diskpar.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995867(EXCHG.65).aspx

Recently I’ve had to added mount points to an existing exchange cluster. The cluster resource is online and I can see it in Explorer. Like a good admin I make sure I can write and deleted. I make a text document, able to create it, delete it. All looks good. Then you create a new folder, and try to delete it. You get an “Access Denied. The source file may be in use ” message. All the permissions look good but what’s the problem. This happens because the Recycle Bin doesn’t understand Mount Points. To delete this new folder, use Shift+Delete to bypass the recycle bin. I have no idea why this occurs, but no good admin, you are not crazy, just use Shift+Delete and hopefully this saves a call to MS support.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/243514

So you’ve finally added all your disks in the cluster. In the case of a disaster what was the disk signature of that one mount point you added 4 months ago? How can you get it? I’m not sure how usefully this information is but I figure it cant hurt. I would be more than happy to send a spreadsheet to Microsoft Support with cluster disk info and say help.

Install Support tools.

Run cluster res clusterdiskobject /priv

Example: cluster res p-vs2-data /priv

This will output mount volume info, disk signatures, and MPVolGuids. Keep these in a spreadsheet.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/883286