Taking Volume Resources In and Out Of Service

Some background processes such as virus scanners and Windows Services will try to access a shared volume for write access. These processes may be required to run applications and cannot be arbitrarily turned off for long periods of time.

In most cases, these applications will have no effect on the manual switchover of SIOS Protection Suite volumes. However, if you see error messages similar to the following during a manual switchover (actual failovers are not affected), you should use the Volume Remove Stop/Restart feature described below.

*ERROR* [No. 12035] Unable to lock volume <volume ID> on <system name> machine at this time as it may be in use by some application. Please free this volume and try again.

If the volume has users doing non-write access only (remote links, local opens), removing the volume from service succeeds as does restoring the volume on the other system (for example, manual switchover). The existing user “opens” are, of course, no longer valid. However, they prevent the volume from being restored to service on the original system whether it is manually switched back over or automatically failed back over to the original system. Attempts to do so result in the following error message:

*ERROR* [No. 12046] LifeKeeper RESTORE VOLUME <volume ID> FAILED(err=<error number>).

The end result is that removing or restoring a volume, switching a volume over or back or switching any hierarchy that includes a volume resource over or back fails if the volume has any users, local or remote.

In addition, the system’s PATH variable must not contain any file shares that exist on the volume to be protected by SIOS Protection Suite. File shares in the PATH variable may also cause volume operations to fail. Remove any such shares prior to creating the volume resource in SIOS Protection Suite. The PATH variable may be modified by selecting System then Environment from the Windows Control Panel.

Volume Remove Stop/Restart Programs and Services

SIOS Protection Suite provides configurable registry keys that permit the user to specify programs and services to be stopped and restarted on a system during a volume remove operation. This feature starts and stops user specified programs and services when SIOS Protection Suite detects open handles on any volume that is being removed and taken out of service on that system. However, if SIOS Protection Suite detects no open handles on the volume being removed from service, it will not attempt to stop anything on that system. Instructions for using this feature are as follows:

1. Determine which programs and services are accessing the volume in question and preventing successful volume failovers.

2. Specify programs to stop and start by adding a subkey for each program under:

• 64-Bit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SIOS\LifeKeeper\VolumeRemoveStopPrograms\*
  For example, to stop a program called “myapp.exe”, add the following subkey:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SIOS\LifeKeeper\VolumeRemoveStopPrograms\myapp.exe\

3. Under the subkey for each program, add the following values (all are REG_SZvalues):

For example, values could be entered to stop and start “myapp.exe /a /t /p” with its associated arguments as follows:

Note: By default, SIOS Protection Suite includes a subkey for stopping perfmon.exe and the restart option is disabled.

1. Specify services to stop and restart by adding a subkey for each service under:

• 64-Bit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SIOS\LifeKeeper\VolumeRemoveStopServices\
  For example, to stop a service called “mysvc”, you would add the following subkey:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SIOS\LifeKeeper\VolumeRemoveStopServices\mysvc\

2. Under the subkey for each service, add the following values (all are REG_SZvalues):

For example, values could be entered to stop and start “mysvc” as follows:

Volume Restore Stop/Restart Programs and Services

SIOS Protection Suite provides configurable registry keys that permit the user to specify programs and services to be stopped and restarted on a system during a volume restore operation. This feature is similar to the Volume Remove Stop/Restart Programs and Services feature described above with the following differences:

• Programs to stop and restart are specified as subkeys under:
  • 64 Bit:   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SIOS\LifeKeeper\VolumeStopPrograms\

• Services to stop and restart are specified as subkeys under:
  • 64 Bit:   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SIOS\LifeKeeper\VolumeStopServices\