Safe Creation of Shared Disk Volume Instances

In order to safely create a shared-storage volume resource, the user must ensure that only one system at a time has write access to the volume at any time. This includes the time prior to the creation of the SIOS Protection Suite instance.

Since SIOS Protection Suite cannot recognize that the volume is shared before an instance is created, manual steps must be taken to ensure that the volume is never writable on two or more systems at the same time.

To protect the volume from simultaneous write access, use the following procedure. In this example, two systems – SYSA and SYSB – are connected to shared storage. This storage is configured with two volumes which should be assigned drive letters E and F on both systems, then protected with SIOS Protection Suite volume instances.

1. Power on SYSA, while leaving SYSB powered off.

2. Install LifeKeeper if it has not been installed.

3. Assign drive letters E and F to the volumes; format with NTFS if not formatted yet.

4. Power off SYSA.

5. Power on SYSB.

6. Install LifeKeeper if it has not been installed.

7. Assign drive letters E: and F: to the shared volumes.

8. In a command prompt, run the following commands:

%LKBIN%\volume -p E

%LKBIN%\volume -p F

9. Reboot SYSB. It will come up with the E: and F: drives locked.

10. Power on SYSA. It will come up with the E: and F: drives writable.

11. Create volume resources for E: and F: on SYSA and extend to SYSB.

An alternative to powering the systems off is to use Disk Management to take the shared physical disk offline.