topic Need to move LUNs to new aggr but retain drive letters on MS SQL Cluster in Data Protection

Need to move LUNs to new aggr but retain drive letters on MS SQL Cluster

sequeirad — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:40:51 GMT

We are currently using SnapDrive to present a set of LUNs to a MS SQL Cluster using SnapDrive.

We need to move these LUNs to a new aggr but we need to maintain the same drive letters on the MS SQL Cluster after the move.

Has anyone attempted to do this before?

If yes, can you please list the steps?

i intend to move the volumes that house these LUNs to the new aggr using snapmirror.

I am thinking the steps would be this:

- use snapdrive to disconnect the disks from the MS Cluster.

- begin snapmirror to copy volumes holding the LUNs to new destination.

- quiesce and break the snapmirror once the copy is complete

- reconnect the drives to MS Cluster using snapdrive?

Something doesn't seem right with the approach but I don't know how else to accomplish this.

thanks for any and all help

Re: Need to move LUNs to new aggr but retain drive letters on MS SQL Cluster

miguelvalls — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 03:29:11 GMT

Hey If you are moving inside the same controller why don't you try data Motion feature of Data Ontap in 8.x, you can find the Technical Report in Field Portal with name - NetApp Data Motion for Volumes. Rishikesh Boddu, NetApp October 2010 | TR-3873

it will move your volume from one aggregate to other without outage even keeping your drive letter in windows.

Good luck my friend,

regards,

Miguel Valls

Re: Need to move LUNs to new aggr but retain drive letters on MS SQL Cluster

sequeirad — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 03:39:02 GMT

Unfortunately we are not running 8.x version Miguel.

We are still on 7.x.

Re: Need to move LUNs to new aggr but retain drive letters on MS SQL Cluster

miguelvalls — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 05:04:09 GMT

Sequeirad, basically is the same but with outage.

- To minimize the outage create the snapmirror relationship first, with the destination volume in the new aggregate

- To simplify the steps use the OnCommand System Manger 3.1 and use the wizard to create the snap mirror relationship

- After the transfer finish, shutdown SQL Services to not impact the LUN disconnect

- Disconnect the drive from windows cluster using snapdrive

- Update the snapmirror relationship, when finish quiesce the snapmirror and then break.

- Then delete the snapmirror relationship

- Now rename the source volume to source_old and then rename the destination volume with the old source volume name.

- From snapdrive reconnect the new LUN with the same drive letter and connect it to the same cluster instance

- Bring back the SQL services and you are done, after you check that and your environment is ok, offline and destroy your source volume

Then you are done.

So your outage will be just a short time.

So hope that can help

Best regrads,

Miguel Valls

Re: Need to move LUNs to new aggr but retain drive letters on MS SQL Cluster

sequeirad — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 16:42:07 GMT

Miguel;

Thank you for detailed steps.

Is there a need to do the rename of the volumes?

Can I not just use the new names for the volumes?

Re: Need to move LUNs to new aggr but retain drive letters on MS SQL Cluster

miguelvalls — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 20:21:30 GMT

Yes, that si not a problem, you can use the name that you want except the same.

Regards,

Miguel Valls

Re: Need to move LUNs to new aggr but retain drive letters on MS SQL Cluster

billshaffer — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 17:21:38 GMT

One additional step - check the lun serial number on the source and destination luns with "lun serial <lun_path>". If the destination luns don't have the same serial, change it with "lun serial <lun_path> <serial>". Sometimes if the lun serials change, things complain, and I can't remember if snapmirror maintains that serial.

Bill

Re: Need to move LUNs to new aggr but retain drive letters on MS SQL Cluster

miguelvalls — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 03:34:21 GMT

Hey Sequeirad,

did you finally move your volume successfully? hope you did.

Miguel Valls