On Windows 2008 R2 , a System Reserved Partition is created. It is 100 MB and acts as a preparatory step for implementing Bitlocker. The installation doesn’t install Bitlocker. BitLocker is a disk encryption method for full disk encryption.
The System Reserved Partition can cause problems in some monitoring tools. The System Reserved Partition volume is unmapped but is monitored by default on some monitoring agents.
Various vendors have workarounds for excluding the System Reserved Partition information and therefore false alerts. When monitoring a Database Server such as SQL Server or DB2 accurate and effective alerts are critical.When monitoring SQL Server Database Status this can cause much DBA stress
For example , IBM have introduced an environment variable NT_EXCLUDE_UNMAPPED_DISKS. This variable can be configured in the Windows OS agent KNTENV configuration file and can take the values:
0 (default) = HardDiskVolume# disks are monitored, if present.
1 = HardDiskVolume# labeled disks are not be monitored.
Speak to other vendors about workarounds for excluding this information
Author: Jack Vamvas (http://www.sqlserver-dba.com)
