[cisco-voip] going to 10.5.2 after upgrade and unaligned partitions

Thu Jan 8 13:50:18 EST 2015

Great explanation, Ryan.   Thanks for the clarification.

On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Ryan Ratliff (rratliff) <rratliff at cisco.com
> wrote:

>  Inline, lots of good stuff below.
>
> -Ryan
>
>
>  On Jan 8, 2015, at 12:10 PM, Anthony Holloway <
> avholloway+cisco-voip at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks Ryan.
>
>  There is certainly confusion surrounding this concept of partition
> alignment for me.  Considering Erick's original statement of, "For those
> of you sill out there doing upgrades from pre-9.x to 10.x and running nto
> the unaligned partition issue...", I am trying to wrap my head around when
> I might see this.
>
>  One Cisco employee says:
> "For customers using jump upgrade (comming from 6.x, 7.x) a rebuild once
> getting to CUCM 9.X is mandatory since the VM will miss-align during the
> process."
> Source:
> https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/11903591/error-unsupported-partitions-unaligned-after-upgrade-ucm-912
>
>
>  RR> This is correct, any Jump upgrade will result in unaligned
> partitions.
>
>
>  But of course, the upgrade scenario Erick describes is not a Jump
> upgrade, as he describes going from 8.6 to 10.5.  But, to continue on the
> Jump upgrade process for just a moment longer...
>
>
>  RR> Also correct, 8.6 to 10 isn't a Jump and there is no reason a
> virtualized 8.6 will be unaligned.
>
>
>  Cisco Live Breakout BRKUCC-2011 on slide 28 shows that a DRS
> export/Rebuild/Import is required for Jump upgrades to 9.1(2).
> http://d2zmdbbm9feqrf.cloudfront.net/2014/usa/pdf/BRKUCC-2011.pdf
>
>  In the accompanying video for this Breakout, at the 8:04 mark, the
> presenter starts to talk to this process, and describes disk alignment
> pretty well.  Then, at 8:34 touches on how disks can become unaligned, but
> I feel like he didn't articulate the point very well.  Would it have been
> accurate to say that the install of 6x on VMWare, and the fact that there
> is not a supported OVA for it, is what caused the disk alignment issue in
> this process?
>
>
>  RR> The installation process for 6.x and 7.x will create unaligned
> partitions regardless of what OVA is used.  There was a defect IIRC in
> early 8.0 and in some Unity Connection installs that would also create
> unaligned partitions, but outside of defects 8.x and later installs won't
> break partition alignment whereas earlier versions definitely will.
>
>
>  So now, it appears to me that this concept is only applicable to VMWare
> and not MCS bare metal deployments.  Meaning, you could only possibly have
> unaligned partitions if on VMWare.  Is that true?
>
>
>  RR> Absolutely true.  The concept of alignment is specific to
> virtualized filesystems.
>
>
>  If so, then it would also seem to me, there's only two possible ways to
> have this issue of unaligned partitions:
>
>  1. If you are on VMWare now, with aligned partitions, and then you muck
> with the VMWare settings for the guest, specifically the ones pertaining to
> the disks. (do we know which settings?)
>
>
>  RR> re-creating or reformatting an existing disk is the easiest way to
> do it.
>
>    2. If you deploy new on VMWare without using an official OVA, but
> rather you just manually build out the specs of the server, and miss the
> 64K boundary for the disk alignment.
>
>
>  RR> Correct. Our OVA includes partitioned vDisks that are aligned.
>
>
>  If we read Erick's other statement: "I used 10.5.2 upgrade media to
> upgrade from 8.6, at that point you need to do the fresh install and DRS
> restore routine to correct the unaligned partition issue.", then it would
> seem as though his server was running with unaligned partitions on 8.6 to
> begin with and this is not the rule, but rather the exception.
>
>
>  I agree wholeheartedly.
>
>
>  The assumption that he had unaligned partitions existing in 8.6, would
> then further imply he was running 8.6 in VMWare and not bare metal.  He
> didn't state that, but that's my guess.
>
>
>  RR> A safe assumption, or the P2V process he used went through a Jump
> along the way.
>
>
>  However, since there are official OVAs for 8.6 and 10.5, I'm guessing
> the only reason there was unaligned partitions in 8.6 is because one of two
> possibilities:
>
>  1. The original 8.6 install on VMWare was done without the official OVA
> 2. The official OVA was used, but someone changed the disk settings some
> time afterwards.
>
>
>  RR> Right on, see my previous comments on ways partitions get unaligned.
>
>
>  How'd I do Ryan?  I'm I getting it, or am I missing it?
>
>
>  RR> Definitely getting it.
>
>
>  Erick, do you have any further details to share with us since you just
> went through this and most likely talked to TAC about it?
>
> On Thu Jan 08 2015 at 10:20:08 AM Ryan Ratliff (rratliff) <
> rratliff at cisco.com> wrote:
>
>> Nothing about an upgrade from 8.6 to 9.x or later guarantees unaligned
>> partitions.  You will only get the error because your partitions were
>> unaligned already.
>>
>> -Ryan
>>
>>  On Jan 7, 2015, at 11:19 PM, Erick Wellnitz <ewellnitzvoip at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  I used 10.5.2 upgrade media to upgrade from 8.6, at that point you need
>> to do the fresh install and DRS restore routine to correct the unaligned
>> partition issue.
>>
>>  The issue occurs when you try to install a fresh subscriber after
>> having done the DRS restore on the Publisher.
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 8:06 PM, Anthony Holloway <
>> avholloway+cisco-voip at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't understand the scenario you are describing.  At first you talked
>>> about upgrades from pre 9x to 10x.  Then you mentioned fresh installs of
>>> 10.5(2).  Then you mentioned restoring publishers.  So, do we have:
>>> upgrading, installing, and restoring all affected by this bug?
>>>
>>> On Wed Jan 07 2015 at 8:33:27 PM Erick Wellnitz <ewellnitzvoip at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  For those of you sill out there doing upgrades from pre-9.x to 10.x
>>>> and running nto the unaligned partition issue...
>>>>
>>>>  There is a bug that was opened on 12/30 regarding the fresh install
>>>> with 110.5.2.10000-5
>>>>  and installing the subscriber(s) ater the restore to the Publisher.
>>>>
>>>>  You get about 99% complete and run into a critical error.  The
>>>> install log shows errors related to your web administrator account.
>>>>
>>>>  Fix requires root access.
>>>>
>>>>  Bug ID: CSCus35964
>>>>
>>>>  It wasn't available on bug search tool last I checked.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  _______________________________________________
>>>> cisco-voip mailing list
>>>> cisco-voip at puck.nether.net
>>>> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-voip
>>>>
>>>
>>  _______________________________________________
>> cisco-voip mailing list
>> cisco-voip at puck.nether.net
>> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-voip
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-voip/attachments/20150108/5a77dcf2/attachment.html>