topic Multiple partitions on a single LUN in ONTAP Discussions

Multiple partitions on a single LUN

bjornkoopmans — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:23:20 GMT

Hi,

Since my company is currently designing a brand new Exchange 2010 environment, a couple of questions arose by the project team about storage.

The most current being: is it supported (or perhaps even advisable) to put multiple Windows partitions on a single NetApp LUN? I know SnapDrive would automaticly create a single partition on the LUN at the moment of creation.

Personnaly, I wouldn't know why anyone would want to create multiple partitions on a single LUN, but hey, people always seem to come up with some sort of reason. 🙂

Thanks for your help!

Re: Multiple partitions on a single LUN

tycornwall — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:39:46 GMT

You can create multiple partitions on a LUN. Of course as you mentioned, not sure why but yes, I am sure some one some place thinks it would be a good idea... Perhaps a Manager ...

Re: Multiple partitions on a single LUN

olson — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:00:58 GMT

Snapdrive should be used to create disks. At this time I don't believe that snapshots are supported on luns with multiple partitions with the snap manager products. The main problem you want to avoid is misaligned I/O on Windows.

Hope this helps!

Re: Multiple partitions on a single LUN

bjornkoopmans — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:57:50 GMT

Haven't thought of snapshot support and misaligned I/O, but indeed, it sounds very plausible.Thanks!