This chapter describes how to prepare disks before you install Windows Server 2008 R2 software on an SGI Altix UV 100 or SGI Altix UV 1000 system. Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter, when booted from EFI, will allow you to manage the disks with a proper GPT label without any external help. If you are having problems reinstalling Windows on a system originally installed with Windows, using the dd and Linux to wipe the master boot record (MBR) will allow you to be install Windows and bring the disks back online.
System disks are built into a RAID volume. You need to activate the volume (using the lsiutil configuration utility) before the system can see the system disks and boot the operating system. The lsiutil utility can be loaded from DVD or USB stick.
This section provides several alternative methods to setup disk drives to run Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter software.
If there is a a problem where the disk is not seen by the Windows Installation disk, then boot a minimal live Linux distribution that supports NTFS. See http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page or http://mirrors.kernel.org/gentoo/releases/amd64/current-iso/ and use the dd command to clear the disk, as descibed in the next step.
The first 51 to 64 blocks on a disk need to be cleared to get rid of all the data that Windows install program sees. Use the dd command to clear the first several dozen sectors of the drive, as follows:
% dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=32
Start the Windows install program and use the installer to online, partition, and format the disk. It is easier to wipe the drive and use Windows software to partition the disk, making extra partitions for non-Windows operating systems you may want to install. Linux will install within a pre-made partition.
In summary, you need to wipe out the master boot record (MBR), create a new msdos label, create 100MB system partition and a second boot/system partition greater than or equal to 46GB. Then format the partitions targeted to Windows as NTFS.
If you have been running Linux on your Altix UV 100 or Altix UV 1000 system and want to prepare disk drives for Windows, perform the following steps:
Boot a minimal live Linux distribution that supports NTFS. See http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page or http://mirrors.kernel.org/gentoo/releases/amd64/current-iso/.
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Caution: Before you run the following commands, make sure that nothing on the drive is mounted or the running, Linux may get confused and crash. And make extra sure that you are wiping the correct drive. Physically pull any drives you do not want to overwrite, if you are not sure.
Assuming the drive is Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) or Serial attached SCSI (SAS), use the dd command, as follows:
% dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1
Use the parted disk partitioning and partition resizing command, as follows:
% parted /dev/sdX
Use the mklabel command to make an MS-DOS label, as follows:
% mklabel msdos
Use the mkpart command to create a partition, as follows:
% mkpart p fat32 0 100MB
Create another partition (whatever size you need > 46GB, as follows:
% mkpart p fat32 100MB 100GB
Run mkpart for any additional partitions.
The boot partition should be selected with the "boot" flag. Only one boot partition can be selected, as follows:
(parted) set 2 boot on
Use the mkfs.ntfs command to create an NTFS file system for each partition that Windows will see, as follows:
% mkfs.ntfs /dev/sdX
Replace the "X" with the letter of the drive on your system, for example, /dev/sda