Mirroring traditional volumes
Novell Cool Solutions: Question & Answer
Q:
I recently upgraded my Novell(5.1.6)servers to Novell 6 w/sp3 overlay cd. I previously had mirrored drives through Novell (5.1.6) nwconfig. I am taking it for granted I still have traditional volumes. I did not do any NSS conversion. Can I mirror my traditional volumes or do I have to convert them to NSS?
A:
Yes, you can keep existing traditional mirrored partitions, you can add and remove traditional partitions from those mirrors. However, you cannot mix traditional and NSS partitions in a single mirror group.
NetWare 6 includes VCU.NLM (Volume Copy Upgrade) which can be used to copy traditional volumes to NSS. This is not an "in-place" conversion. It requires free disk space for the new NSS partition equal to or greater than the size of the data on the traditional volume being converted. It is a copy utility, not a conversion utility. For details on how to use it, see this section of the doc.
You need a traditional volume and a NSS pool with a size to hold a new NSS volume which can receive all the storage allocated by actual files on the existing traditional volume. It copies the folders, files, trustees and attributes over.
Two typical scenarios are: have a mirrored traditional partition, break the mirror, destroy one side to get free space. Or use additional hardware. Then, in both cases, create a NSS pool on the free space, run VCU. Finally clean up by destroying the obsolete traditional partition, if any, and - optionally - mirror NSS to additional or reclaimed free space.
Novell Cool Solutions (corporate web communities) are produced by WebWise Solutions. www.webwiseone.com