Creating shared LUNdisks with Windows powershell toolkit for use in microsoft clusters

JEROENVRANCKX

Hello everyone, 

As some of you probably know, snapdrive is not supported anymore by netapp on windows server 2019(and we've had some issues with it already) so basically we are trying to script a powershell module which gives us some of the same functionality that snapdrive has by using the powershell toolkit.

I have a question regarding the snapdrive functionality with which you can create a shared disk (available for use in a microsoft (failover) cluster) . Does anyone know if there are extra parameters which need to be set for these luns, or if there are any special things to watch out for?

Thanks in advance!

Ontapforrum

Hi,

It's a good question.

Yes, SnapDrive has reached End-of-Availability and will be end-of-support soon. SnapDrive is/was tightly integrated with Microsoft Technologies (File-system/MSCS), and therefore it is/was simple to create shared LUNs for MS clustering purposes (such as creating igroup, marking it as 'shared', formating, extending etc etc all done automatically ) which otherwise requires manual steps followed in order. However, if the steps are followed properly then you can acheive the same result as you do with SnapDrive. Here are couple of articles on that :

How to create an MSCS Cluster with shared disk resources without using SnapDrive:
https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1035123/~/how-to-create-an-mscs-cluster-with-shared-disk-resources-without-using

How to set up MSCS with ISCSI Microsoft software initiator without using SnapDrive:
https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1035193/loc/en_US

Coming to your query : I guess, you can script the creation of vol,lun,igroup,extending lun etc using PowerShell but rest  (I am afraid) will be same as the steps mentioned in the article.

I think PowerShell geeks from NetApp can further highlight or correct me on this.

NetApp PowerShell Toolkit
https://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4475.pdf

Thanks!