Server appears to hang while scanning for devices and partitions

Server needs long time to complete the scanning for devices and partitions process during the boot process.

Cluster Services will take long time to load because of CMON.NLM that perform a re-scan of all devices and partitions.

Cluster SBD partition was corrupted.

Delete and Recreate the Cluster SBD partition following the proper steps:

1. Down the cluster on all the nodes by issuing 'Cluster DOWN'  and 'ULDNCS' commands;
2. Keep NetWare running on one Cluster Node, and Down and Power Off the remaining nodes;
3. Delete the Cluster partition with NSSMU (Notice the Device ID this SBD partition is currently on for the re-creation in a later step);
4. Load the following NLMs in this order: CLSTRLIB.NLM, VLL.NLM, SBDLIB.NLM;
5. Run 'SBD Install' on the server console (The system will now do a check for the SBD partition availability on the shared storage, should not find it as have we just deleted it, and tell you to run the SBD install command again)
6. Run 'SBD Install' again, choose if you want a mirrored SBD partition, then select the device(s) where the partition(s) should reside

7. Restart the server and verify if the issue is fixed and the boot process and Cluster Services load process are now faster.

Please note that both the mentioned symptoms must exits to point to a possible SBD partition corruption.

Most of the time, the slowness to complete the scanning for device and partitions during the boot process, is caused by a wrong load order of the driver modules in the "c:\nwserver\startup.ncf" file. The correct load order can be different from time to time and is based on the environment details, therefore the hardware vendors involved should be contacted to be sure about the proper configuration.

The KB 10099619 provides the driver modules load order based on real life experiences, and some general troubleshooting suggestions.