What happens during a partition merge?

Partition merge operation is stuck
What happens when I merge a partition?

When you tell NDS Manager, ConsoleOne or NDSiMon to merge a partition into its parent partition, the following operations will occur:

1.  NDS  looks at what servers are in the replica rings for the parent and child partitions.
Parent Partition:  [Root]
FS1 - M
FS2 - RW
FS4 - RW
FS6 - RW

Child Partition:  support.novell
FS1 - RW
FS2 - M
FS3 - RW
FS4 - SR
FS5 - RW
FS6 - SR

2.  NDS then has to ensure that all servers will have a copy of all the objects in the Newly Merged partition.  So when the following merge is completed the following servers will be in the Root Replica ring:  FS1-M, FS2-RW, FS3-RW, FS4-RW, FS5-RW, FS6-RW.   Any servers that do not have actual copies of the objects will have to be given a copy of the objects first before the merge can continue.  The following will happen. Note that any Subordinate Reference replicas will be changed to Read Only to give them a real copy of the objects.

Parent Partition:  [Root]
FS1 - M
FS2 - RW
FS3 - RW  - This replica will be added
FS4 - RW 
FS5 - RW  - This replica will be added
FS6 - RW

Child Partition:  support.novell
FS1 - RW
FS2 - M
FS3 - RW
FS4 - RO  - This replica will be added
FS5 - RW
FS6 - RO  - This replica will be added.

When completed, all servers in the parent replica ring will be in the child replica ring and vice versa.  There will be no Subordinate Reference replicas in the child replica ring just prior to the merge completing.  The matching of replica rings is usually the operation where a merge operation will fail if it does.  Typically you will get a server stuck in a NEW or Transition On state that cannot complete due to errors in the ring.   Remember that before a copy of a partition is added, a subref of the child partition must be added. The method for troubleshooting at this point would be as a standard NEW replica issue.

3.  Once both partitions' replica rings contain the same servers, the merge operation should occur within a few minutes.  To speed up the actual merge operation, manually add and/or remove replicas to servers so that the parent and child replica rings are identical to begin with.

Parent Partition:  [Root]
FS1 - M
FS2 - RW
FS3 - RW
FS4 - RW  
FS5 - RW
FS6 - RW  

Child Partition:  support.novell
FS1 - RW
FS2 - M
FS3 - RW
FS4 - RW
FS5 - RW
FS6 - RW

Formerly known as TID# 10024971