How to delete an existing NDS partition

  • 7001605
  • 10-Oct-2008
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell NetWare 5.x
Novell NetWare 4.x
Novell Directory Services FLAIM Database
Novell Directory Services RecMan Database

Situation

Getting an error trying to delete the container that is the partition root.
How to delete an existing NDS partition

Resolution

To merge the partition first do an NDS Health Check as described in TID# 3564075 - NDS Health Check Procedures. Then make sure the replica rings are consistent for example
PARENT PARTITION:
Server A holds a Master replica
Server B holds a Read Write
Server C holds a Read Write

CHILD PARTITION:
Server D is the Master
Server A has a Subordinate Replica
Server B has a Subordinate Replica
Server C has a Read Write

You must first make sure these rings are consistent. In this case you would add a read write replica of the parent partition to Server D. You would also add a Read Write, or Read Only replica of the child partition to Servers A and B. The reason for this is that when you merge the partition Servers A & B currently do not have a real copy of all the objects in the child partition. You are clearing the partition boundary, so these servers would need copies of all those objects. If you do not add a r/w or r/o replica to those servers, when you attempt to merge the partition it will add r/o replicas anyway until the merge completes. Also since Server D holds a real copy of the child partition but does not hold a replica of the parent partition it will need copies of those objects including the partition root object.  You can let the merge perform the replica additions, but it is always less DS intensive if you add the replicas manually first rather than letting the system add them for you.

Once the partition is merged you can simply delete the container object. If there are server objects in the container you would need to remove DS from those servers first, or move the server objects and volume objects, then delete the container.

Additional Information

You cannot just delete a container that is partitioned, you must first merge the partition with the parent, then delete any leaf objects before deleting the container object.
Formerly known as TID# 10062520