Intel Modular Server LUN Copy Feature

The Intel Modular Server has an add-on ability to copy logical disks (LD) from one storage pool to another on the local IMS SAN.

For our in-house cluster we ran a backup of the SBS v7 public beta VM to a VHD located on our data storage server. If we want to start fresh we can restore that SBS v7 OS to a VM in a short amount of time versus doing a fresh Answer File based install.

While we are preparing to stand up a three node cluster on our IMS we are running a test to see if we can keep that SBS v7’s LD available for the soon-to-be cluster.

But, in the meantime we are looking to restructure some of the IMS’s on board SAN storage. So, we are copying that LD from one storage group to another using the LUN Copy feature (MFSLUNCOPY).

The whole process took about 25 minutes for the default SBS v7 OS install which is about 20-25 GB in size. The disk is offline at the moment so an accurate number cannot be had. But, the backup VHD file is currently about 20 GB in size.

All of the IMS local storage hard drives with the exception of bays 1 and 2 are 146 GB Seagate 15K Savvio drives. The first two bays have 160 GB X25-M Intel SSDs in them.

Once the copy has completed we can then went on to delete the source LD:

Another use for this feature would be to copy an LD of a Windows 7 desktop OS that has been prepared for production use. We would SysPrep the OS and copy that LD to create as many Windows 7 desktop OSs as was needed.

The Microsoft Desktop Deployment Toolkit would be of great benefit if we have a need for more than a few desktop OS deployments.

Further Reading

• Intel Site: Intel LUN Copier

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer