Rapid Deployment Pack

Article: 20000010

Applies to: Release 6.x

The Get Drive Configuration jobs include a task that runs the Altiris showdisk utility. The showdisk utility uses a proprietary algorithm to produce a human readable list of disks present on the target server. The Altiris rdeploy and wipe utilities use the same algorithm, and thus the same enumeration order, when scanning the target server.

By default, rdeploy and wipe operate on the "first" disk. The "first" disk might not be the system boot disk on a target server with multiple disks, either DAS or SAN. The showdisk output can be used to determine the appropriate values for the -d# option for either utility in the Create Disk Image or Distribute Disk Image tasks of an imaging job or a scripted install job, or the Erase Hardware jobs.

IMPORTANT: The Linux Pre-boot environment (LinuxPE) is not multipath aware in SAN environments. When using tools such as Altiris' showdisk under LinuxPE, all paths to the logical drives will be displayed.

For a target server with Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Logical Volume Manager (LVM), disk 1 represents the LVM volume. When capturing an LVM image, either do not specify the -d# option or use -d1. If the number of the physical/logical disk is specified, that disk will be captured in raw mode. If deploying an LVM image, the disk numbers that the LVM volume will span must be specified. For example, -d1,2,3 to deploy the LVM image to disk 1, disk 2, and disk 3.

Additionally, for IA64 platforms, an HP linux tool, hpshowdisk, is available to complement the Altiris showdisk information. hpshowdisk is found on the Deployment Server under <InstallPath>\hpfeatures\hw-integrity\bin. It provides information such as SAN storage devices WWID identifications, disk controller, and SAN logical disks LUN number to better identify the disks.
IMPORTANT: If using hpshowdisk, make sure to run prior to a task that runs the acu utility or hpshowdisk may report an unknown device error message.

Showdisk example for a Windows Server 2003 target with one SAN-attached drive. The SAN drive is Disk 1.

Disk 1 (SCSI): 9725/255/63, 156232125 sectors, 74.50 GB (MBR, sig=e9bdd33f)

Showdisk example for a Red Hat Linux target with two physical drives. The LVM volume is Disk 1.

Disk 1 (Unknown): 2170/1024/64, 142221312 sectors, 67.82 GB (LVM)