Explanation of WFA command "Create LUN with local SDCLI"?

[reide]

I'm looking for some clarification on the WFA 2.0 command "Create LUN with local SDCLI".   Clearly, this command communicates with SnapDrive to help automate LUN creation.  The question is, it is communicating with SnapDrive on a remote host, or with SnapDrive on the local WFA server?  I've read the command description and reviewed this in the Reference Manual, and it doesn't clearly state how this command is to be used.  If this can truly make calls to SnapDrive on servers remote to the WFA server, that would be fantastic.

Any help here would be appreciated.

[satishh · Accepted solution]

Hi Reid,

"Create LUN with local SDCLI" command uses SDCLI of snapdrive(SDW) installed on the WFA host. If the MachineName parameter is specified, then the LUN is created on the remote machine, provided SnapDrive is installed on the remote machine and the SnapDrive Server instance is added to SnapDrive on the WFA Host. If the MachineName is not specified, then the command is executed on the local machine.

[yaronh]

Thanks Satish!

Just to add a little point:

Initially we created said command to interact with a SnapDrive copy that is installed locally on the WFA server.

MachineName parameter allows you to utilize remote machines installed with SnapDrive.

AFAIK, the SnapDrive has to be installed locally even when utilizing remote SnapDrive installations. Utilizing those remote machine happen through the local copy.

Cheers,

Yaron

[reide]

Great answers!  Thank you!

[aparker]

Has anyone successfully used this?   I'm trying and I get some kind of access permission problem:

20:42:39.233 INFO  [Create LUN with SDCLI] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

20:42:39.248 INFO  [Create LUN with SDCLI] Unable to get system configuration.

20:42:39.264 INFO  [Create LUN with SDCLI] Error: Web Service Client channel was unable to connect to the SDWCFService.LUNProvisioningService instance on machine BB1.

20:42:39.279 INFO  [Create LUN with SDCLI] Access Denied: User does not have enough rights to perform this operation

20:42:39.295 INFO  [Create LUN with SDCLI] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is using the MachineName argument to specify the remote SnapDrive instance.    I can successfully manually run the sdcli command from a PowerShell prompt.    Of course, SDW is installed on the WFA server and I can run commands directly.

I assumed this fails because the account the WFA server account doesn't have rights on the remote server (since it is the local system account).

I tried making a new version of "Create LUN with SDCLI" (I need to make a C mode one anyway), where I used "invoke-command" with a scriptblock to specify different credentials to run the SDCLI command.   But even if I use the SnapDrive service account, it still fails.

Any thoughts?

-Alan Parker

[aparker]

To follow up on this, I could not resolve the above issue directly.   What I did, was to change it to use "invoke-command" and specify the remote windows host via that, as opposed to using the -m option on SDCLI, and that works.     It's not ideal, because you have to do a "winrm quickconfig" on the remote host first, and you need to pass in credentials for the Windows host, but it will serve our purpose for now.   I also created a cDOT version.  If I have time, I'd rather get it to work with the -m option on SDCLI, but I need to move on.     I'll post it shortly.

-Alan Parker