Is there a way we can use SnapDrive to create RAW disks and manage the Automount piece?

[biescas]

Hi,

We have an issue at the moment with one of our customers and I wonder if anybody can help:

High Level Synopsis – 

• 2x Win2k8 R2 servers iSCSI attached to a FAS3140 cluster
  
• SnapDrive 6.2 installed
  
• Oracle RAC requires Oracle ASM – Oracle ASM requires RAW disks
  
• LUNs were created at the FilerView level and presented to the pair of Win2k8 servers (didn’t use SnapDrive to create as it wouldn’t let us create RAW disks)
  
• ASM requires the disks to automount on a host reboot.
  
• We use DiskPart to set automount to enabled
  
• We set the registry to force automount to be enabled
  
• Every time we re-boot automount is disabled?
  
• So the problem is not a very Oracle one I guess.
  

The queries –

• Is there a way we can use SnapDrive to create RAW disks and manage the Automount piece?
  
• Have we missed something completely obvious?
  

If we look for a resolution to this problem on the NOW Site we get the following solution:-

SnapDrive for Windows disables Automount

KB ID: 2014000 Version: 3.0 Published date: 12/15/2010

Cause

Oracle RAC on Windows using RAW partitions requires that Automount is enabled via diskpart. SnapDrive disables the AutoMount option during service startup, which can prevent the Oracle RAC from functioning.

Solution

Currently, SnapDrive does not support the management of luns presented as RAW devices. Remove SnapDrive from the system to prevent it from disabling Automount.

If we remove SnapDrive, then we have an issue in that we are removing a key component of SnapManager for Oracle. Do we have solution to get around this issue as SnapManager for Oracle is supposed to support Oracle RAC and ASM. Is there a way around this issue, or will snapManager for Oracle work without SnapDrive loaded, If so How do we do this.

Sorry about the long question but have already tried other ressources with no luck. So I was wondering how someone with Oracle RAC & ASM experience would manage to get SMO to work in a windows environment.

Regards,

[radek_kubka · Accepted solution]

Hi Elias,

Oracle is not the area of my core skill, but I vaguely remembered SMO + ASM is supported in Linux / UNIX environment only, and not on Windows.

I just had a look at IMT (http://now.netapp.com/matrix/mtx/login.do) & if you drill down to SMO + WIndows 2008R2 combination, you can find additional info next to both SDW 6.2 & 6.3 configurations, saying neither RAC, nor ASM is supported (note Id 1261).

Regards,
Radek

[rhideg_linear]

Hi,

SM for Oracle 5.1 Release Notes:

"SnapManager for Oracle does not support ASM and RAC configurations on all supported Windows platforms (Windows 2003 and Windows 2008)."

We are trouble with this, because our customer would like to install Oracle RAC with ASM on Windows 2008 R2. So we can not use SM for Oracle.

[sam_wozniak]

I've seen customers switch platforms for exactly this limitation. 
Also, just chiming in because I have a problem with the way the limitation is worded.  Instead of:

"SnapManager for Oracle does not support ASM and RAC configurations on all supported Windows platforms (Windows 2003 and Windows 2008)"
IMO, it should simply say:
"SnapManager for Oracle does not support ASM and RAC configurations on Windows 2003 and Windows 2008"

So much clearer and concise. 

[shead2]

Q: If Oracle RAC is installed on Windows 2008. Is it possible to at least install snapdrive v6.5 to carve out the shared disks?  Assuming ASM supports NTFS and no RAW disks are added to the equation?

[radek_kubka]

I've never tired it, but I believe it will not work - RAC clustering (Oracle Cluster File System) is different from Windows clustering and I reckon SnapDrive only handles the latter, not the former.