"mount storage from one server to another server"

mdabdul · 07-08-2015, 12:50 AM

dear all,
i am beginner and new to this forum, i need your help and i will be grateful to you. In my company we have a linux server say server1 having os intalled in it (RHEL 6.1) we have LUN configured on the storage and this storage is mounted to the server1.
my requirement is that the mounted storage should be removed
from server1 and mounted to the new server say server2 . how can i make this possible ? your help will be appreciated thanks in advance.

Note:server1 and server2 have same ips and all specifications.

regards,
abdul

MensaWater · 07-08-2015, 09:44 AM

It depends on what the "storage" is.

If it is an NFS mount you'd have get the fstab entry from the first host and add it to the new host. You'd also have to be sure the exporting server (seen in the name before the colon in the fstab entry) allows the new host to mount from it.

If it is direct attached storage enclosure you'd have to remove the attachment from the current host and attach it to the new host (which might also involve moving an HBA).

It is SAN storage from a disk array you'd have to do a lot more such as:
1) Determine type of HBA used (usually fiber channel from someone like Qlogic or Emulex).
2) Determine how the existing server is zoned in with your fiber switch (assuming you're not using point to point).
3) If you can move the existing HBAs to the new host the existing zoning would probably work. If however, you're doing new HBAs you'd have to set up new zonign.
4) Many disk arrays allow you to "mask" (present to specific servers) only certain LUNs so that all servers don't see all LUNs. If so you'd have to do similar steps in the disk array to "mask" the host as you did for zoning in the SAN switch.

You haven't really given enough information to be more specific.

Start by doing a df to see your filesystems. Review your /etc/fstab to see what device (or share) is mounted to be those filesystems. From there determine what the underlying devices are (e.g. do you have software RAID meta disks, LVM Logical Volumes, partitions etc...). The tools needed to determine beyond that are generally vendor specific to whoever made the storage if it is SAN or direct attach.