Mirror internal disk with iSCSI disk but boot failed

attken · Thu Jan 27, 2011 10:13 am

Hi,
Because some of our application servers needs to do OS disk mirroring protection .
So i start to test if i can using StarWind + windows 2008 dynamic mirroring to achieve this.

I bought INTEL PRO 1000 PT network card and installed on Windows 2008 for iSCSI boot feature.
I tried to test using StarWind present one disk to Windows 2008 server by iSCSI and convert local OS disk and iSCSI disk to dynamic type , and do RAID 1 mirroring.

After mirror completed , shutdown Windows 2008 server and pull out internal disk .
I saw Windows 2008 shows up you can choose boot from original disk or secondary plex , i choose secondary plex (StarWind disk) but boot failed (The screen displays Starting Windows .... then became blank screen ).

Is this problem is from iSCSI or Windows boot loader ?

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Thanks,
ATTKEN

Thu Jan 27, 2011 11:03 am

You do very strange things... Just install Windows 2008 R2 to iSCSI volume and configure it to boot from iSCSI initially. And do mirroring at server side. That will have the job done in working way, eliminate the use of local disk on server and also have the same performance (as mirror is done to network).

attken wrote:Hi,
Because some of our application servers needs to do OS disk mirroring protection .
So i start to test if i can using StarWind + windows 2008 dynamic mirroring to achieve this.

I bought INTEL PRO 1000 PT network card and installed on Windows 2008 for iSCSI boot feature.
I tried to test using StarWind present one disk to Windows 2008 server by iSCSI and convert local OS disk and iSCSI disk to dynamic type , and do RAID 1 mirroring.

After mirror completed , shutdown Windows 2008 server and pull out internal disk .
I saw Windows 2008 shows up you can choose boot from original disk or secondary plex , i choose secondary plex (StarWind disk) but boot failed (The screen displays Starting Windows .... then became blank screen ).

Is this problem is from iSCSI or Windows boot loader ?

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Thanks,
ATTKEN

attken · Thu Feb 03, 2011 10:09 am

Yes,
i know i can just install windows 2008 R2 to iSCSI Volume and it will works fine , but my boss insist that OS should remain in local hard disk and using windows 2008 dynamic disk mirroring to mirror OS to iSCSI volume for extra protection.
IO Performance is not so importmant to our application(not so heavy load).

I tried many times to fix windows 2008 boot loader but failed ...

seems there is no easy way to fix that...?

Any input will be appreiated !

ATTKEN

Thu Feb 03, 2011 10:40 am

Google a bit as issue has nothing to do with StarWind itself. I would recommend to make sure you have boot capable iSCSI initiator installed however.

attken wrote:Yes,
i know i can just install windows 2008 R2 to iSCSI Volume and it will works fine , but my boss insist that OS should remain in local hard disk and using windows 2008 dynamic disk mirroring to mirror OS to iSCSI volume for extra protection.
IO Performance is not so importmant to our application(not so heavy load).

I tried many times to fix windows 2008 boot loader but failed ...
seems there is no easy way to fix that...?

Any input will be appreiated !

ATTKEN