Sunday, February 8
Four Oh Eight in the Effen AM!
Ok, I've been at the office since NOON YESTERDAY. We're trying to replicate our Exchange Server with a product called Double Take. We've had nothing but problems, solved one at a time through extensive troubleshooting.
Finally, just when it looks like things are working... I look up at the just started process and ask, "Why is Double Take deleting the Windows directory on the Target Server?" Over the tech support line, "Stop the process!"
Arrg...
Now they are waking up the Level 3 Support guy. I have this sneaking suspicion I am going to be loading Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 from scratch again.
Update:
After a comment from a reader, I thought I should elaborate on what happend early Sunday morning...
In a nutshell, we were having some performance issues with our Target machine, and ainchient Compaq ML350 G3. We updated the Firmware on two RAID controllers and a NIC. We were not using Double Take Application Manager any longer to do the replication, we were using the Application Console. When we rebooted the machine after the updates, Double Take lost sight of the partitions on the seconed RAID controller. We did not catch this error, and the Application Console has fewer safetys than DTAM. As a result, it tried to wipe the C: drive to make it look like our first Storage Partition.
The techs at Double Take stayed on the phone with us for over 12 hours to work on the issues. They also called back the following day to tell us they had determined what happened. The logs were completely zapped, but they had a BOMGAR sessions recorded. Several of their Level 3 techs watched the BOMGAR session to figure out what happened.
They are also building in a safety to the Application Console to stop this from happening again. No data was lost, and everyone was very helpful. I also had a very solid tape backup of the Source and Data before we started on the project. It was mostly an inconvienence to reload an Exchange Server from bare metal at 4:30 AM.
Finally, just when it looks like things are working... I look up at the just started process and ask, "Why is Double Take deleting the Windows directory on the Target Server?" Over the tech support line, "Stop the process!"
Arrg...
Now they are waking up the Level 3 Support guy. I have this sneaking suspicion I am going to be loading Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 from scratch again.
Update:
After a comment from a reader, I thought I should elaborate on what happend early Sunday morning...
In a nutshell, we were having some performance issues with our Target machine, and ainchient Compaq ML350 G3. We updated the Firmware on two RAID controllers and a NIC. We were not using Double Take Application Manager any longer to do the replication, we were using the Application Console. When we rebooted the machine after the updates, Double Take lost sight of the partitions on the seconed RAID controller. We did not catch this error, and the Application Console has fewer safetys than DTAM. As a result, it tried to wipe the C: drive to make it look like our first Storage Partition.
The techs at Double Take stayed on the phone with us for over 12 hours to work on the issues. They also called back the following day to tell us they had determined what happened. The logs were completely zapped, but they had a BOMGAR sessions recorded. Several of their Level 3 techs watched the BOMGAR session to figure out what happened.
They are also building in a safety to the Application Console to stop this from happening again. No data was lost, and everyone was very helpful. I also had a very solid tape backup of the Source and Data before we started on the project. It was mostly an inconvienence to reload an Exchange Server from bare metal at 4:30 AM.
Labels: 4 AM, bad support, double take, insomniac, microsoft
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