SnapDrive and OnTAP Compatibility

[TMADOCTHOMAS]

FIrst, some background: we are migrating from SnapDrive/SMSQL to SnapCenter, however SC has numerous bugs <related to failover clusters and mount points> that requires us to keep SnapDrive (but not SMSQL) on a few servers until the bugs are patched. We are running OnTAP 9.3 because SnapDrive isn't supported in OnTAP 9.4 and above. I am aware there are special bundled versions of SnapDrive with certain SnapManager products (such as Hyper-V) that are supported in OnTAP 9.4 and above, but SMSQL isn't one of them.

Now my question: what if I installed one of the special SnapManager/SnapDrive bundled products on the SQL Servers where I need SnapDrive, and just didn't use the SnapManager component? Would that be a legitimate way to get a supported version of SnapDrive on those servers so we can upgrade to OnTAP 9.5? It would be even simpler, of course, if installing the latest SnapDrive patch as a standalone would be compatible (see below), but everything I've seen so far indicates it is not.

Would love to hear anyone's insight! Thanks in advance.

SnapDrive 7.1.5P3

https://mysupport.netapp.com/site/products/all/details/snapdrive-windows/downloads-tab/download/30049/7.1.5P3

[mlroberts99]

Hi There,

When a SnapDrive version is not supported on a certain Ontap version, it becomes pretty much useless as it doesn't let you do anything. My question is, why use SnapDrive at all? What's the hypervisor? VMware or Hyper-V? You should just be able to mount the LUN to an iGroup and connect to the physical hosts.

Thanks,

Matt

[TMADOCTHOMAS]

We use SnapDrive and SnapCenter for application aware backups of our SQL Servers.

[mrahul · Accepted solution]

SnapCenter has "SnapCenter Plug-In for Microsoft Windows" which is the next generation plugin for SnapDrive for Windows.

'SnapDrive' and  'SnapCenter Plug-In for Microsoft Windows' can co-exists ONLY until migration completion - if you are migrating backups from SDW/SMx to SC.

One thing you need to take care of is that SnapDrive and SnapCenter contain the same path and filename for the SnapDrive.PSModule.DLL

“C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\SnapDrive\SnapDrive.PSModule.dll”

So if you don't take the necessary steps, SnapCenter cmdlets will not get recognized when SnapDrive for Windows is installed.

[TMADOCTHOMAS]

Thanks @mrahul . The only thing we have to continue using SnapDrive for is LUN creation on Windows Failover Clusters. All other activities would be done in SnapCenter. Once the bug is resolved we would eliminate SnapDrive. I'm not using PowerShell to run SnapDrive or SnapCenter commands so that shouldn't be an issue for us. Thank you for the tips!