12 Apr 2013

Automating online Extension of a CSV using Powershell

In this article I’d like to give an example on how to automate an online extension of a Cluster Shared Volume on a remote Server (Cluster Node).

Before you’re going to kill your Failover Cluster, please consider that the following snippets and commands assume that….

  • You know, what you’re doing
  • You hopefully named your Cluster Shared Volumes identically to the logical volume names
  • You increased already the physical disk size of your CSV
  • You installed the Powershell Failover Cluster Management Tools (Add-WindowsFeature RSAT-Clustering-Powershell)
  • You enabled and configured WinRM on all of the Cluster Nodes

First we have to get the current owner of the CSV

$volume_name = "CSV1"
$cluster_name = "hvcluster2"
$csv_owner = (Get-ClusterSharedVolume -Cluster $cluster_name | ? {$_.Name -eq "CSV1"}).OwnerNode.name 

 

**Now let’s get the Volume ID from Diskpart Output
**

$volume = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $csv_owner -ScriptBlock {"list volume" | diskpart} | Select-String $volume_name | Select-String -Pattern '[0-9]{1,3}'
$volume_id = $matches[0] 

Here comes the tricky part. As there is currently no CMDLET to extend a volume (if there is any please ping me) I had to use old fashion DISKPART command.
With the Volume ID we got from the previous command, we’re going to invoke the remote DISKPART command for volume extension

Invoke-Command -ComputerName $csv_owner -ScriptBlock {"RESCAN","SELECT VOLUME $($args[0])","EXTEND"| diskpart} -Args $volume_id

There are of course also other ways and simplifications to the code above, but to keep it readable I did not combine all steps. It would be really nice if we had a Powershell CMDLET for Logical Volume Extension to get rid of old fashioned DISKPART. Other DISKPART commands can be easily replaced with CMDLETs. Have a look for a some examples within the post of Thomas Maurer.