Storage Replica - SRgroup suspended and cant be resumed.

Question

When I tried to change the direction of a SRgroup in storage replica server 2019 ( what we do often). The remote server crashed. When it came backup online the replication was suspended. When I try to sync it back it goes fail. The partnership only exist on 1 of the server and I cant delete the partnership or add it back. The data is not available on any of the 2 server. I cannot browse the disk as the replication suspended. You can see the result of get-srgroup from both server bellow.

Any suggestion to recover the data from the disk on either side would be appreciated.

AllowVolumeResize  : False AsyncRPO           : ComputerName       : CSVW-PFSREP05 Description        :  Id                 : fcc938d0-7c69-4466-b0a4-aa03505f2fdf IsAutoFailover     : IsCluster          : False IsEncrypted        : False IsInPartnership    : True IsMounted          : False IsPrimary          : False IsSuspended        : False IsWriteConsistency : False LastInSyncTime     : 2/6/2024 2:57:01 PM LogSizeInBytes     : 8589934592 LogVolume          : N:
Name               : AUDIOGRAMDATA-1 NumOfReplicas      : 1 Partitions         : {53559f26-0a27-4d96-91df-b65d939f4b6a} Replicas           : {MSFT_WvrReplica (PartitionId = "53559f26-0a27-4d96-91df-b65d939f4b6a")} ReplicationMode    : Synchronous ReplicationStatus  : Failed TemporaryPath      :  PSComputerName     :   

AllowVolumeResize  : False AsyncRPO           : ComputerName       : CSVW-PFSREP06 Description        :  Id                 : 4be5ca43-e35e-4feb-a275-081dfc68d3c7 IsAutoFailover     : IsCluster          : False IsEncrypted        : False IsInPartnership    : True IsMounted          : False IsPrimary          : False IsSuspended        : True IsWriteConsistency : False LastInSyncTime     : LogSizeInBytes     : 8589934592 LogVolume          : N:
Name               : AUDIOGRAMDATA-2 NumOfReplicas      : 1 Partitions         : {425f700d-d408-4c75-b20a-ed5bf5fa8fa3} Replicas           : {MSFT_WvrReplica (PartitionId = "425f700d-d408-4c75-b20a-ed5bf5fa8fa3")} ReplicationMode    : Synchronous ReplicationStatus  : ReplicationSuspended TemporaryPath      :  PSComputerName     : 

Answer 1

Hi Simon,

Thanks for your post. Generally speaking, storage Replica supports backing up and restoring the source volume. It also supports creating and restoring snapshots of the source volume. You cannot back up or restore the destination volume while protected by Storage Replica, as it is not mounted nor accessible. If you experience a disaster where the source volume is lost, using Set-SRPartnership to promote the previous destination volume to now be a read/writable source will allow you to back up or restore that volume. You can also remove replication with Remove-SRPartnership and Remove-SRGroup to remount that volume as read/writable.

To create periodic application consistent snapshots, you can use VSSADMIN.EXE on the source server to snapshot replicated data volumes. For example, where you are replicating the F: volume with Storage Replica:

vssadmin create shadow /for=F:

Then, after you switch replication direction, remove replication, or are simply still on the same source volume, you can restore any snapshot to its point in time. For example, still using F:

vssadmin list shadows

vssadmin revert shadow /shadow={shadown copy ID GUID listed previously}

You can also schedule this tool to run periodically using a scheduled task. For more information on using VSS, review Vssadmin. There is no need or value in backing up the log volumes. Attempting to do so will be ignored by VSS.

Use of Windows Server Backup, Microsoft Azure Backup, Microsoft DPM, or other snapshot, VSS, virtual machine, or file-based technologies are supported by Storage Replica as long as they operate within the volume layer. Storage Replica does not support block-based backup and restore.

Reference：Frequently asked questions about Storage Replica | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards,

Ian Xue

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Answer 2

The problem you are facing is not uncommon, since Storage Replica is pretty fragile and may fail in case of server crash or sudden power outage.

The best course of actions in your case would be removing all the remnants of the broken storage replication to get access to your volume. If any of Powershell commands (already mentioned above) don't work, potential workaround may be uninstalling Storage Replica feature followed by a restart, which should release the source volume and make it accessible again.

Generally, depending on your configuration, I would highly recommend you use Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct https://aka.ms/s2d or Virtual SAN https://www.starwindsoftware.com/vsan to replicate/mirror your data between servers instead of Storage Replica, if applicable.