In troubleshooting some poor network card behavior on my Dell PowerEdge T420 running Windows Server 2012 with three virtual machines on it, I came across these articles that describe problems with virtual network queues enabled on Broadcom NICs.
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2902166/EN-US?wa=wsignin1.0
http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Server/Windows_Server_2008/Q_27985670.html
I upgraded to the latest drivers and disabled the virtual machine queues. My sample size was small and problems intermittent, so it's hard to say if I resolved the issues, but it's worth noting.
Showing posts with label poweredge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poweredge. Show all posts
Monday, February 2, 2015
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
unable to allocate drive space for unallocated space - 2 TB parition size limits on NTFS
I'm building a Windows 2008 R2 x64 Standard box on a Dell PowerEdge T610 right now, and I ran into trouble with disk sizing that is begging to be documented.
This particular machine came with eight 600 GB SAS drives. I configured the RAID array as a RAID 5 with maximum allocation over seven of the drives and kept the final drive as a hot spare (I find that is most easily done by going into the RAID utility during the POST).
Anyway, when Windows finally came up, I had my 100 GB system partition, but I had two separate partitions of unallocated space, one was about 1.9 TB and the other was 1.3 TB. I could not allocate the 1.3 TB parition at all. It was useless to me.
I came across this article:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverhyperv/thread/b242efb4-302e-4fd2-aa0a-831fb56665e1
In short, it seems like an disks with the MBR partition style can only have 2 TB worth of usable partitions on it. The answer is formatting the drive as GPT partition style. But the problem is that a system partition cannot be GPT and a single drive can only have only one partition style. As such, you MUST have two virtual disks - one that will have the partition style MBR (for the system partition) and one that will have the partition style GPT (for the data partition).
So here is what I did with the help of a Dell tech:
create two virtual disks - one that is 100 GB (which will be the system partition) and one that is 3.5 TB (which will be the data partition)
To do this, press Control R (or whatever sequence is required to get into the RAID setup).
Delete all other virtual disks (press F2 when highlighting the disk and choosing delete).
Create a new virtual disk using the disks you want to use in both arrays (in my case that was 7 disks - disk 0 through disk 6) and change the allocation to be 100000 MB - the size of the virtual disk defaults to be the maximum size of all the drives together. You are changing that.
Do not add a hot spare here. We will add a global hot spare later in the PD Mgmt page.
Hit OK and then run a fast init of the of newly created virtual disk.
Under unallocated space (I believe), you'll now see the remaining space on the 7 drives. Highlight that unallocated space and hit F2 and create new VD. It will automatically select the 7 drives (disk 0 through disk 6) and default to the maximum size of all the remaining space. Hit OK. Do not make a hot spare here. We will do that later in the PD Mgmt page.
Run a fast init on the newly created virtual disk.
Now, hit control P until you're at the PD mgmt page. Assign a global hot spare.
Hit ESC until you are out and then begin your installation process.
With this done, you'll be able to install Windows on the first virtual disk - which will be the MBR partition style.
Then when Windows is up, you can go into disk management and assign the other disk as a GPT partition style. Here is what this looks like:
Of note, the Dell tech also spoke of a UEFI setting in the BIOS that some servers (including this one) have. With that setting enabled, one can create NTFS partitions larger than 2 TB, but I decided to go with this more universal option.
This particular machine came with eight 600 GB SAS drives. I configured the RAID array as a RAID 5 with maximum allocation over seven of the drives and kept the final drive as a hot spare (I find that is most easily done by going into the RAID utility during the POST).
Anyway, when Windows finally came up, I had my 100 GB system partition, but I had two separate partitions of unallocated space, one was about 1.9 TB and the other was 1.3 TB. I could not allocate the 1.3 TB parition at all. It was useless to me.
I came across this article:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverhyperv/thread/b242efb4-302e-4fd2-aa0a-831fb56665e1
In short, it seems like an disks with the MBR partition style can only have 2 TB worth of usable partitions on it. The answer is formatting the drive as GPT partition style. But the problem is that a system partition cannot be GPT and a single drive can only have only one partition style. As such, you MUST have two virtual disks - one that will have the partition style MBR (for the system partition) and one that will have the partition style GPT (for the data partition).
So here is what I did with the help of a Dell tech:
create two virtual disks - one that is 100 GB (which will be the system partition) and one that is 3.5 TB (which will be the data partition)
To do this, press Control R (or whatever sequence is required to get into the RAID setup).
Delete all other virtual disks (press F2 when highlighting the disk and choosing delete).
Create a new virtual disk using the disks you want to use in both arrays (in my case that was 7 disks - disk 0 through disk 6) and change the allocation to be 100000 MB - the size of the virtual disk defaults to be the maximum size of all the drives together. You are changing that.
Do not add a hot spare here. We will add a global hot spare later in the PD Mgmt page.
Hit OK and then run a fast init of the of newly created virtual disk.
Under unallocated space (I believe), you'll now see the remaining space on the 7 drives. Highlight that unallocated space and hit F2 and create new VD. It will automatically select the 7 drives (disk 0 through disk 6) and default to the maximum size of all the remaining space. Hit OK. Do not make a hot spare here. We will do that later in the PD Mgmt page.
Run a fast init on the newly created virtual disk.
Now, hit control P until you're at the PD mgmt page. Assign a global hot spare.
Hit ESC until you are out and then begin your installation process.
With this done, you'll be able to install Windows on the first virtual disk - which will be the MBR partition style.
Then when Windows is up, you can go into disk management and assign the other disk as a GPT partition style. Here is what this looks like:
Of note, the Dell tech also spoke of a UEFI setting in the BIOS that some servers (including this one) have. With that setting enabled, one can create NTFS partitions larger than 2 TB, but I decided to go with this more universal option.
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