Re: Major HELP requested - PDC dead in middle of Win2K UPgrade...
- From: Doc <pc-dc-doc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 11:19:13 -0700
Doc Rick typed this:
Quick thumbnail... 40 user network w/ older NetFrame 3100 PDC and 5100BDC - none of the scsi controllers were (are) Win2K or Win2K3 compatible. Initial effort was to use PQ's ServerMagic NT (ver3) to CLONE over the RAID5 NT4SP6a system to a 'new' SCSI drive on a WIN2K3 certed SCSI card (LSI) and then boot into NT4 and "update" to Win2K3.
However this did not seem to work (new drive has identical files, folders, core NT files, etc, but will not boot to NT4 - I currently am looking at the contents in a stand alone Win2K3 server and it is attached to a SCSI card and viewable) and when I reconnected that antiquated 'virtual' MegaRAID controller (thru the embedded SYMBIOS old chipset) the ARRAY is not seen - entering the ARRAY configuration displays an online and optimal array and so I cannot use any of the utils there to 'do anything' because IT THINKS it is fine. But it as well will NOT boot into NT4.
At the same time this is happening, my BDC just seemed to have burned out its embedded video card as I cannot get it to come up on screen (tried three) thru my KVM (or by itself) - so I've got really limited access to that and I don't want to bring it down to install a new video card (even for VGA) -
So, as I currently have 3 servers already running Win2K or Win2K3, what's the best route to getting my domain back up and running "IF" I cannot get a PDC into the picture?
What side effects are there "IF" I just decided to make one of the current Win2K's or3's a DC ?? Will it allow me to do that?
Greatly appreciate any help or pointers... oh, did I mention that my UPS is also just now honking? Battery is failing to keep charge and so that's special. Who did I piss off?
Much thanks for any help or suggestions (I do have dynamite).
We got it working...
We "had not" gone to AD as the system was still basically an NT driven
domain. So the three 'other' Win2K servers were part of the NT domain and that had four NT servers, one of them PDC, other BDC and two that
were part of the domain.
What I discovered was that the 'main drive' of a RAID5 array was either
bad or somehow became bad (it is an older Wdgtl 9.1GB SCSI and WOULD not
show up as anything larger than 1024 mbs(!) after the beginning of the
UPGRADE) and that brought the PDC down. As I'd done a clone, we thought
no problems there as I had a nice new U160 36GB ATLAS V and it "should've" had all the PDC stuff cloned over... it did. Even the 'bad'
parts of the old 9.1 drive and it would not work... I even ran SR6 on it as a test, still no joy.
At any rate the BDC was all we had and from prior experience I was not really trusting that machine - we were going to rebuild it (old as these are they are still ATX based and all dual PentII or better and have a backplane for 10 drives... we'll put in new SCSI or RAID cards and try them as storage for some eccentric needs this firm has) - with a blank
screen, I kept thinking that somehow we'd experienced some power flux that had taken the PDC and the video of the BDC even though I could not
find any 'other' evidence. With nothing really else to do, I punched the
'warm reboot' of the BDC, it came up fine after the typical 'old machine' delay of two or so minutes. All the user data intact... all the
printer data intact, all our scripts, etc... this was MOST wonderful.
I rebuilt the old 'PDC' with a new SCSI card, new drives and put it in
as a BDC and it synced - will 'promote' that NOW Win2K3 compatible machine to PDC and turn off the BDC and update the network to Win2K3 and AD - NEXT WEEK!
Doc
-- Rich "Doc" Colley
mailto: pc-dc-doc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx .
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