Corruption using Starport AoE with linux vblade and NTFS

dmd350 · Thu Jan 21, 2010 8:30 pm

I thought I solved this problem but I clearly did not.

I'm using the Starport AoE initiator on 4 Windows 2008 x64 EE servers to an Ubuntu 9.10 linux server target running vblade on an NTFS partition. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but data on the target is being corrupted in strange and mysterious ways when I write to the volume from each of the different systems. For example, If I copy folder A from server 1, then copy folder B from server 2, then copy folder C from server 3. All servers should see folders A, B, and C, but instead each can only see the 1 folder that it copied. On the vblade target server, only folder C is visible. Each server can browse the contents of the folder it copied until it reboots, then it says "File system is corrupt and unusable." Or if I try to delete folders, I'll get errors and then Windows tells me that "The recycle bin is corrupt, empty it?" And then another popup saying "The file system on F: may be corrupt, run chkdsk?"

What is going on here? I thought NTFS was supposed to be able to deal with write access from multiple systems, but it clearly isn't. So what file system should be used on the target? Is StarPort able to handle concurrent access from multiple systems this way?

Thanks,
DD

Constantin (staff) · Fri Jan 22, 2010 10:01 am

No, NTFS is not a clustered FS, either StarPort cannot handle it. You have to use clustered FS on AoE device, such as MelioFS or MetaSAN

faxioman · Wed Apr 21, 2010 8:31 am

I have the same problem...but the difference is that I'm using an ntfs partition with only one vblade attached. Is it possible to use NTFS partition with starPort without having disk corruption?

Wed Apr 21, 2010 11:56 am

Not sure what exactly you do. Do you have ONE writer to NTFS or MULTIPLE writers? And what "vblade" means here?

faxioman wrote:I have the same problem...but the difference is that I'm using an ntfs partition with only one vblade attached. Is it possible to use NTFS partition with starPort without having disk corruption?

faxioman · Wed Apr 21, 2010 11:22 pm

I have one writer to ntfs partition. vblade is an AoE initiator for linux (http://aoetools.sourceforge.net/).
So, I have an usb disk attached to a linux server with vblade as initiator, and StarPort AoE on windows mounting tha aoe disk.
After some copied file (eg. 30GB) I have the same corruption error described at start of this post.

Thanks.

Wed Apr 21, 2010 11:26 pm

So you have one Linux initiator and one Windows initiator connected to... What?

faxioman wrote:I have one writer to ntfs partition. vblade is an AoE initiator for linux (http://aoetools.sourceforge.net/).
So, I have an usb disk attached to a linux server with vblade as initiator, and StarPort AoE on windows mounting tha aoe disk.
After some copied file (eg. 30GB) I have the same corruption error described at start of this post.

Thanks.

faxioman · Sat Apr 24, 2010 9:38 am

No, I haven't a Windows initiator, but a Windows client with StarPort Client connected to vblade on linux

Mon Apr 26, 2010 7:32 pm

OK, so it's "Lost in Translation". You call vblade "initiator" and it's a target and that's what had confused me.

Please apply for Beta program to get access to the most recent Windows AoE Initiator we'll publish soon.

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/beta-testing-program

Thanks!

faxioman wrote:No, I haven't a Windows initiator, but a Windows client with StarPort Client connected to vblade on linux

faxioman · Sat May 08, 2010 10:32 pm

Oops...sorry! I don't know why I wrote initiator! Sorry again.
Thank you for your support.

Fabio

Sat May 08, 2010 10:39 pm

NP

So what was the end of your story? Did you manage avoiding corruption with a newer builds?

faxioman wrote:Oops...sorry! I don't know why I wrote initiator! Sorry again.
Thank you for your support.

Fabio