System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and NetApp Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent

Technical Report
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

and NetApp Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent
Chris Lionetti, NetApp
November2011 | TR-3874
BEST PRACTICES AND PRESCRIPTIVE GUIDANCE FOR
INCORPORATING NETAPP SMI-S AGENT INTO A HYPER-V AND VMM
2012 ENVIRONMENT
In VMM 2012, you can discover, classify and provision remote storage on supported storage
controllers (arrays) through the VMM console. VMM fully automates the assignment of storage
to a Hyper-V host or Hyper-V host cluster, and tracks the storage that is managed by VMM.
To enable the new storage features, VMM 2012 uses the new Microsoft Storage Management
Service to communicate with external controllerss through an SMI-S (Storage Management
Initiative Specification) agent. The Storage Management Service is installed by default
during the installation of VMM 2012. You must install a supported SMI-S agent on an available
server, and then connect the agent to VMM 2012 management.

2 System Central Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and NetApp Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................................ 3
2 COMPONENTS AND TERMINOLOGY ................................................................................................. 4
3 ARCHITECTURAL CONSIDERATION .................................................................................................. 5
4 SETUP AND CONFIGURATION ........................................................................................................... 6
4.1 ENVIRONMENT PRE-REQUISITES .......................................................................................................................... 6
4.2 SETUP AND CONFIGURATION OF SMI-S AGENT .................................................................................................. 6
4.3 POPULATING THE SMI-S AGENT WITH NETAPP TARGETS TO MANAGE .......................................................... 6
4.4 SETUP AND CONFIGURATION OF VMM 2012 ........................................................................................................ 7
4.5 INSTALLING OF NETAPP POWERSHELL MODULE ............................................................................................... 8
5 EXERCISING FUNCTIONALITY ........................................................................................................... 8
5.1 DISCOVERY .............................................................................................................................................................. 8
5.2 CLASSIFICATION ..................................................................................................................................................... 9
5.3 ALLOCATION .......................................................................................................................................................... 10
5.4 PROVISIONING ....................................................................................................................................................... 10
6 EXERCISING SCENARIOS ................................................................................................................. 11
6.1 RAPID PROVISIONING ........................................................................................................................................... 11
7 CONFIGURATION CHEAT SHEET ..................................................................................................... 13
8 TROUBLESHOOTING ......................................................................................................................... 13

1 OVERVIEW
This document makes the assumption that you are familiar with the published Microsoft System Center
Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 Documentation. This document is intended to specifically address
anything outside of the scope of the official Microsoft documentation as it relates to NetApp Storage. As
such you will find the standard procedure for adding a Service Template or the standard procedure for
adding Hyper-V hosts outlined very clearly in the official Microsoft documentation. This document focuses
instead on aspects such as setting up the NetApp Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent, and setting up the agent to
discover Aggregates.
This SMI-S integration is designed to allow end-to-end discovery of logical and physical objects and the
associations between them, add storage capacity to hosts and clusters, and rapid provisioning of VMs
using the SAN. The SMI-S interface can also be used to allow simple tasks to be accomplished via VMM
to create and deploy new storage to individual hosts or clusters.
The SMI-S integration does not however prevent the use of NetApp SnapDrive, NetApp System Manager,
or PowerShell scripts from also creating or provisioning LUNs either new or from Snapshots. If other tools
are used, the Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent will over time catch up with the newly deployed assets.

2 COMPONENTS AND TERMINOLOGY
STORAGE RELATED COMPONENTS
A plex is a set of member drives to a RAID set and commonly consists of a set of data drives and
a pair of Parity Drives. A plex also has defined a maximum size which is also called the RAID Group Size.
A plex of 6 drives might have a RAID Group size of 14 drives which means that the plex may grow (by
adding more drives) to a maximum of 14 drives. NetApp uses RAID-DP which is a custom implementation
of RAID-6 on WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout).
An Aggregate is a collection of one or more plex that are grouped together for both performance and
capacity. The plex that make up a RAID group do not have to be the same size, but they must all have
the same RAID group size defined. An Aggregate can be grown by either expanding member plex within
it, or by adding an additional plex to the Aggregate. Aggregates are the building blocks that all Volumes
live on. Both the expansion of a plex to add disk drives and the expansion of an aggregate can be done
without data access interruption.
A volume is the basic unit of storage and provides a conceptual container for a set of logically related
directories, files, and LUNs. All management type operations and policies such as Snapshots, Thin
Provisioning, De-Duplication are defined on the Volume level.
A LUN is a virtual representation of a SCSI disk as it is presented to a host. A LUN can be mapped
(exposed) to a specific server or set of servers and behaves according to the SCSI Spec. When a LUN is
presented to a host it will show up in Disk Manager as a Physical Disk, or a WINDISK.
System Manager is the NetApp Controller Management software which can be run on any Windows Host.
It is available for download on the http://Now.NetApp.com site.
Data ONTAP is the Controller software that constitutes a NetApp Controller and all of its functions. The
Data ONTAP software runs in a Highly Available (HA) mode by allowing upgrades to single controllers at
a time with automated failover and failback to enable continuous operation.
SnapDrive is the Host based Management tool that allows for management of the Data ONTAP controller
from each host in the environment. A host can manipulate hosts and LUNs, that is to say it can create
Snapshots and LUNs; similarly SnapDrive can disconnect a host from a LUN. Since SnapDrive is both
Window Failover Cluster and CSV (Cluster Shared Volume) aware, these operations will bring the LUN
online to all members of a Cluster, either as standard Cluster LUNs or CSVs as directed. SnapDrive is
launched and run from the Microsoft Server Manager MMC (Microsoft Management Console) built into
Windows Server 2008 R2.
NetApp Multipath DSM is a loadable module that extends the capabilities of the default Microsoft
Multipath IO function (MPIO) offered in Windows Server 2008 R2. The DSM software modifies default
failover behavior to enhance functionality and improve failover speeds on both Fibre Channel and iSCSI
connections. A pre-requisite to the Data ONTAP DSM for windows would be the NetApp Windows Host
Utility Kit (WHUK) which optimizes driver settings for FC and iSCSI adaptors. Both of these products can
be downloaded from the Now.Netapp.com site.
The NetApp Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent is an application that runs on a Windows or Linux based
Operating System that allows SMI-S commands and queries to be interpreted and run against a target
device. This single SMI-S server is scalable to support many NetApp Storage Controllers and will support
multiple requestors.

3 ARCHITECTURAL CONSIDERATION
Due to the way that VMM and SMI-S identify Storage resources, care should be taken to make sure that
your Storage Aggregate names are fully descriptive as opposed to the default aggregate names. As an
example, a default name for an Aggregate on a Storage Controller might be aggr1, whereas the
recommended name for that aggregate would be ControllerName_aggr1_15KSAS. This allows less
chance for error when choosing aggregates and less chance for error when depositing those aggregates
into resource pools. The reason for this is that some VMM screens require you to select a source
Aggregate without telling you from which controller it is being selected.
Also consider that Snapshot copies and Sub-LUN Clones can exist between LUNs, but not across
NetApp Volumes, and that De-Duplication is performed within a single NetApp Volume. When creating a
set of VMs that are highly clone-able or de-Duplicate-able, keep those VMs within not just a single pool,
but within a single NetApp Volume to maximize space savings. For such environments FlexCache
Modules can deliver a great boost in performance because of their extended read cache. See NetApp
Technical reference TR-3832 for more specifics of the advantages of FlexCache.

4 SETUP AND CONFIGURATION
A number of assumptions are made that your environment has been setup according to best practices
such as those laid out in NetApp Technical Report 3702 (TR-3702). This best practice guide lays out the
steps and hardware needed to enable reliable Windows Failover Clustering.
4.1 ENVIRONMENT PRE-REQUISITES
It is assumed that you have the following services installed and operational on your site
AD/DNS infrastructure with administrator credentials
An active NOW.NetApp.com account
Appropriate licenses for the Protocol(s) (iSCSI, FC, FCoE) you will be using on the NetApp
Controllers
The NetApp Controllers must be running Data ONTAP 7.3 or newer in 7-Mode (not cluster-mode)
The setup of the controllers should follow published best practices
WINDOWS FAILOVER CLUSTERS
It is expected that by following the guidance in TR-3702 your Windows Failover Cluster should be able to
pass the Microsoft Windows Failover Cluster Validation process cleanly. Do not continue with this guide
unless your Windows Failover Cluster environment is healthy and operational. This should include
support for Quorum disk as well as enabling CSVs.
4.2 SETUP AND CONFIGURATION OF NETAPP DATA ONTAP SMI-S AGENT AGENT
The NetApp Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent 4.0 can be downloaded directly from the NOW.NetApp.com
website. Select Downloads, then Software. From the list choose Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent and select
the Windows OS and GO. Once you have accepted the license terms you will find the system
requirements for the SMI-S Agent software as well as link to the Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent Installation
and Configuration Guide (ICG).
The SMI-S agent can easily be run within a Virtual Machine as only IP Connectivity to the VMM server
and NetApp Storage Controllers is needed.
Once the SMI-S agent has been installed and tested against a target device you will want to save
credentials on the SMI-S server for possibly a set or farm of NetApp controllers.
4.3 POPULATING THE SMI-S AGENT WITH NETAPP TARGETS TO MANAGE
The following command is used to open the communication path between the Storage Controller and the
SMI-S Agent. This command can be run from the command window that can be found by selecting the
Start menu, then the Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent folder, then select Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent.
Once inside the command window the command to connect to a controller is as follows.
SMIS %user1% %password1% add %array% %user2% %password2%
The following lists the parameters that need to be used to populate the above command.
Variable Name Variable Usage
%user1% & %password1% Local Domain Account name and password
%password1% Password for %user1%
%array% IP Address or resolvable FQDN of a NetApp Controller

%user2% & %password2% Account that is authorized on the NetApp Controller
If you want to use an account other than that used to install the agent you will need to use the following command to
add that user to the SMI-S agent
CimUser a u %user1% -w %password1%
Upon success you will receive confirmation of the method used to connect such as a protocol or a port as
opposed to a failure message. The success message will look like this.
Returned Path ONTAP_FilerData.hostname10.58.2.3,port=80
A failure message will look like this.
CIM_ERR_FAILED: Cant connect to host (err=10060). With storage 10.58.2.3
Once you have connected to the controller you can verify both HTTP and HTTPS connectivity by using a
command to retrieve data.
SMIS %user1% %password1% disks t https
This should return the SMI-S data for those disks. If you want to test this using http instead of https,
simply replace http in the above command.
4.4 SETUP AND CONFIGURATION OF VMM 2012
Setup and install VMM per Microsofts published best practices. Once the installation of VMM are
complete this document will guide you to getting the VMM instance to communicate with the SMI-S agent.
Your individual standalone Hyper-V servers as well as your Windows Failover Cluster Hyper-V servers
can be added to the VMM 2012 environment at this point.
To connect the SMI-S agent to the VMM Instance you will need to complete the following steps.
Choose Fabric Resources, and then from the left pane open the Storage item. Under Storage you will
find Providers which if right-clicked will give you the option to Add a Storage Device. Alternately, you
can click on the Add Resources icon on the main taskbar on the top, select Storage Device from the list of
resources. Once the Add Storage Device Wizard window pops up you will need to enter the IP Address
of the server running the SMI-S Agent as well as the port.
The SMI-S Agent port can be discovered by issuing the following command from the SMI-S Agent
window:
SMIS Config Show
In the output of this command, look for the line which refers to the httpsPort and its current value.
An example of the machine name and port that will be used in the Add Storage Device Wizard will look
like this.
SMISAgent.sea-tm.netapp.com:5989
In the window for adding a RunAs account, either select an account that already has local administrative
privileges on the SMI-S Agent server or create a new account and add those privileges.
As the VMM engine discovers the SMI-S Agents list of controllers and the subsequent list of Storage
Aggregates you will be asked to define a set of Service Levels. If as an example you have two large
Aggregate pools of SATA Drives, you might want to classify them as a Bronze Level of Service Pool. A
set of 15,000 RPM high speed SAS drives however might be a Gold Level Service pool and 10,000 RPM
SAS drives might constitute a Silver Level service pool.

4.5 INSTALLING OF NETAPP POWERSHELL MODULE
It is highly recommended to install the NetApp Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit both on the SMI-S Agent
server for troubleshooting purposes as well as the VMM 2012 machine for commands or maintenance
tasks that are not built into VMM.
You will find the PowerShell Toolkit (Minimum version 1.5) from the Now.Netapp.com site by choosing
join our communities and then choosing developer tools, then PowerShell Toolkit.
This toolkit should be downloaded to the default location for PowerShell modules which is likely the
following:
C:\windows\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\modules
Under this directory you should extract the ZIP file. This will create a DataOntap directory.
To test the installation from a PowerShell prompt type:
Import-module Dataontap
If the module imports properly you should be able to use the following command to open a
communications channel to the controller.
Connect-NAController %ip% -credential %user1%
Type in the password once the popup appears.
5 EXERCISING FUNCTIONALITY
You will find that once your Windows Failover Clusters and your Storage Controllers have been
discovered and added to the VMM 2012 console you should be able to integrate information about any
existing VMs or Storage Pools.
5.1 DISCOVERY
To add new Storage Controllers to your storage farm requires two steps. The first step is to add
credentials to the SMI-S Agent server to allow it to open a communication channel with the controller. The
second step involves telling VMM that is should rescan the SMI-S Agent to allow it to expose those new
controllers.
ADDING CONTROLLER CREDENTIALS TO THE SMI-S AGENT
The following command is used to open the communication path between the Storage Controller and the
SMI-S Agent. This command can be run from the command window that can be found by selecting the
Start menu, then the Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent folder, then select Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent.
Once inside the command window the command to connect to a controller is as follows.
SMIS %user1% %password1% add %array% %user2% %password2%
The following lists the parameters that need to be used to populate the above command.
%user1% & %password1% Local Domain Account name and password
%password1% Password for %user1%
%array% IP Address or resolvable FQDN to a NetApp Controller
%user2% & %password2% Account that is authorized on the NetApp Controller

Upon success you will receive confirmation of the method used to connect such as a protocol or a port as
opposed to a failure message. The success message will look like this.
Returned Path ONTAP_FilerData.hostname10.58.2.3,port=80
A failure message will look like this.
CIM_ERR_FAILED: Cant connect to host (err=10060). With storage 10.58.2.3
Once you have connected to the controller you can verify both HTTP and HTTPS connectivity by using a
command to retrieve data.
SMIS %user1% %password1% disks t https
This should return the SMI-S data for those disks. If you want to test this using HTTP instead of HTTPS,
simply replace http in the above command.
ADDING CONTROLLER CREDENTIALS TO THE POWERSHELL TOOLKIT
A number of commands and methods exist within the PowerShell toolkit to deploy Virtual Servers and
VHDs that make its installation and use recommended. Once the PowerShell toolkit has been added to
the VMM server, you can connect to the controller using the following command
Connect-NAController %ipaddr% -credential %username%
Once this command is entered a Challenge window will appear to authorize the PowerShell Toolkit with
the appropriate password to the controller. You can also choose to allow the PowerShell Toolkit to store
these authenticated sessions using the following command.
Add-NACredential %ipaddr% -credential %username%
Once a controller credential has been stored, you can connect using the Connect-NaController
%ipaddr%% command without having to supply a credential option and without an authentication popup.
This can be very useful for scripting operations. It is also possible to connect to many controllers at once
and use the controller %ipaddr% at the end to specify the controller against which to run the current
command.
EXPOSING NEW SMI-S AGENT MANAGED CONTROLLERS TO VMM
Choose Fabric Resources, and then from the left pane open the Storage item. Under Storage you will
find Providers which if right-clicked will give you the option to Add a Storage Device. Alternatively, you
can click on Add Resources Icon on the main taskbar on the top, select Storage Device from the list of
resources. Once the Add Storage Device Wizard window pops up you will need to enter the IP Address
of the server running the SMI-S Agent as well as the port.
An example of the machine name and port that will be used in the Add Storage Device Wizard will look
like this.
SMISAGENT.sea-tm.netapp.com:5989
Select the newly added storage controller and select next to complete the operation.
5.2 CLASSIFICATION
Classification of storage pools can be done along a number of different valid methods. The most
commonly used method is to deploy your classifications based on the Drive Type and RPM such as the
following:
Bronze : 7200 SATA
Silver : 10K RPM SAS 2.5
Gold: 15K RPM SAS 3.5
Platinum: SSD

While these Classification pools are commonly adopted, other methods to differentiate Aggregates do
exist. These other methods might include the Class of controller that the storage is connected to since a
mid-range controller may not be capable of driving load as efficiently as a high-end controller. Another
possible classification type could be the size of the underlying aggregates as e.g. a 54 Drive Aggregate
would have different performance and capacity considerations than a 10 drive set. Your classification
pools could also be defined strictly along financial boundaries either by the cost of the underlying storage
or storage asset owner.
Consider creating a special pool to be used to monitor the Aggregates that wont be used for workloads.
An example of this is to create a pool for Aggr0 which is commonly reserved for administrative use. A
Special pool called _DontUse_ can be valuable since it will allow you to monitor space usage for things
such as Event and Performance Logs.
5.3 ALLOCATION
Once you have sets of Hosts and Storage Pools defined the next step is to allow access to specific pools
by specific host groups. To allocate a Pool to a host group, choose Allocate Capacity from the top ribbon
and select a Host Group, then click on Allocate Storage Pool You may select a single or many Pools
of storage.
5.4 PROVISIONING
THE LUN CREATION PROCESS
To create a new LUN, select Storage from the left pane, then then right click on Classification and
Pools and select Create New Logical Unit. At this point you can choose the source Aggregate and name
your New LUN as well as give the new LUN a description and a size. In the Classification and Pools
window you should see these new LUNs appear with the setting of Assigned defined as False meaning
that they have yet to be mapped to a physical server.
5.4.1.1 Alternate Method to Create the LUN
If more granular control is needed in the LUN Creation process you can use the PowerShell Toolkit
command to create a LUN in the same method as the GUI. To create a NEW LUN, you will need to know
the Array Name, the Volume that you want it to reside in, the name of the LUN, its Size, and if you want
the LUN to be thin provisioned.
Connect-naController %IPAddr%
New-naLUN /vol/%VolumeName%/%LunName %size%GB type windows_2008 unreserved
Once the command has run, you can use the refresh option for SMI-S to allow VMM 2012 to see and use
the new LUN. Since this process may require a complex process of removing and reconnecting the SMIS
agent, this method should only be used when absolutely needed such as when you need exact control
over in which volume to create a LUN.
5.4.1.2 The Mapping Operation
To make that LUN available to a server running Hyper-V you will need to right click on either the server
name or the server host group and select properties. From the properties pop-up screen you can select
storage and choose to Allocate LUN. This will allow you to select the LUN defined in the previous step
and assign it to the Host or Host Group. Before hitting OK on this selection, be sure that you have issued
the proper Zoning command to the switch(es) if using Fibre Channel or that you can establish a session if
using iSCSI.
A LUN can be just as simply removed from a host by selecting that host, and right clicking to properties.
Once the properties pop-up is available, select storage, choose the storage volume you wish to remove
and select the remove button.

6 EXERCISING SCENARIOS
6.1 RAPID PROVISIONING
Rapid Provisioning of VMs requires you to decide if you want to use the default Snapshot or Clone
method built into VMM of if you want to issue commands via PowerShell for more granular control. In both
methods, the VMM console can be used to expose those LUNs to the Hyper-V Cluster or standalone
Hyper-V server.
SNAPSHOT AND CLONE CONSIDERATIONS FOR VMS (GUI METHOD).
There are two methods to quickly provision a LUN with a VM using VMM 2012: the use of snapshots and
the use of clones. Its important to realize that the terms snapshot and clone in the context of VMM are
used generically, and do not refer to NetApp Snapshot and FlexClone technologies.
Snapshots can be created almost instantaneously on most storage arrays (including non-NetApp arrays)
and those snapshots use virtually no extra hard drive space beyond the deltas. However, non-NetApp
storage arrays that use Copy-on-Write (CoW) snapshots limit the number of active snapshots since each
snapshot degrades performance on these arrays. To alleviate this problem, these classic/legacy storage
arrays offer a clone-like operation in which the snapshot is relocated (copied) to a fresh set of physical
blocks, possibly in a new RAID set. This allows the snapshot to be released and performance to be
returned to baseline expectation. The disadvantage of such a clone operation is that each clone typically
consumes the same amount of storage as the original data. Therefore, if deploying VMs on classic/legacy
arrays with VMM 2012, care must be taken to balance space consumption (clones) versus performance
expectations (snapshots).
The Snapshot technology used on NetApp Controllers does not suffer any performance degradation as it
uses WAFL instead of CoW type snapshots. This allows NetApp to support relatively high limits for the
number of Snapshot copies per Volume (256). In addition, the Clone operation on a NetApp Controller
does not duplicate the original data, which drastically increases your ability to scale. As a matter of fact,
performance generally increases drastically when Snapshot deployments of VMs are used instead of new
copies, since common blocks beween VMs are cached on the controller. Alternately Clones can be
utilized not to increase performance at the cost of disk space, but to allow for administrative settings such
as De-Duplication schedules, Thin Provisioning fencing, or BC/DR operations to be configured uniquely.
POWERSHELL METHOD OF CREATING A NEW VM IMAGE
Even though the GUI method is capable of creating a Clone of an existing LUN containing a single VM,
VMM invokes a physical copy operation (slow and network bandwidth intensive) when adding a new VM
to an existing LUN (such as when adding multiple VMs to a CSV). The Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit
includes cmdlets that allow for more granularity by utilizing sub-LUN cloning to rapidly create a space-
efficient copy of a VHD for a new VM in an existing LUN (or a new LUN).
Below is an example of the commands used to create four identical copies (clones) of a LUN that is
considered a Golden Image (SysPrepd VHD). This operation is similar to the results you would get from
the GUI method of creating a Snapshot of a LUN,and will result in four new LUNs.
Connect-nacontroller %ipaddr% -credential root
New-nasnapshot Vol1 goldsnap
New-nalunclone /vol/vol1/LUN1 /vol/vol1/GoldImageLun goldsnap
This example assumes that I am using Vol1 as my working volume, and assumes that I have a
GoldImageLUN already created and populated. It will create the four LUNs from a Snapshot called
goldsnap created in the second line.

Another example would be to use sub-LUN Cloning to create four copies of the VHD in a new LUN that
might be populated to a Cluster as a CSV. The newly created LUN needs to be temporarily mounted to

the management server in order to identify the disks, but can be removed from that management server
once that is done.
Connect-NAController %ipaddr% -credential root
New-nasnapshot Vol1 goldsnap
New-nalunclone /vol/vol1/CSV1 /vol/vol1/GoldImageLun goldsnap
Add-nalunmap MgmtSvrIGroupName /vol/vol1/CSV1
# Rescan the disks on the management server, and give it a drive letter x:
# Assume that the existing /vol/vol1/GoldImageLun is mounted on this server as Z:\
Copy-nahostfile z:\goldImage.vhd x:\VM1.vhd
Remove-nalunmap MgmtSrvIGroupName /vol/vol1/CSV1
In this scenario, a new LUN has been created and had been pre-populated with four VHDs from a Golden
Image on another LUN. This operation required minimum host traffic and took a fraction of the time that a
copy operation would have.
A last example would be to place a large empty VHD on a LUN which can then be deployed to a server.
Following the procedure below, this is accomplished with minimal load on the controller, and without any
load on the server or any network traffic.
Connect-NAController %ipaddr% -credential root
New-nalun /vol/vol1/LUN5 1005G type windows_2008 unreservered
Add-nalunmap MgmtSvrIGroupName /vol/vol1/LUN5
# Rescan disks on the management server, online it, Initialize it, quick format it and
give it a drive letter p:
New-navirtualdisk P:\VM5.vhd size 1000GB
Remove-nalunmap MgmtSvrIGroupName /vol/vol1/LUN5
Of these three examples, the first one is analogous to the actions taken in the GUI, while the last two
examples cannot be accomplished with the GUI. The benefit of learning the granular method of deploying
storage can be seen in the space savings on the controllers as well as the tremendous time savings
because of the near-instant nature of the operations that otherwise might take hours to complete.
REFRESH THE SMI-S AGENT
Once actions such as deploying or creating LUNs are taken via the GUI or the CLI, it is good practice to
refresh the fabric to allow those changes to be seen in the GUI. This can be done via removing the SMI-S
agent and re-adding it. The propagation of those changes may take a few minutes to be discovered and
to update the VMM fabric overview. This process of removing the SMI-S agent and re-adding that agent
is the fastest and most reliable method to quickly refresh VMM 2012.

7 CONFIGURATION CHEAT SHEET
The following are recommended minimum versions to support VMM 2012 and Hyper-V Hosts running on
Windows Server 2008 R2.
Feature Required Recommended Notes
NetApp FAS Controllers 7.3.5 8.0.2+ 7-Mode
NetApp FlexClone License Installed -
NetApp Data ONTAP SMI-S Agent 4.0 -
NetApp MPIO DSM 3.4 3.5
NetApp SnapDrive 6.4 -
NetApp Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit - 1.5+
NetApp Windows Host Utility Kit 6.0 -

Validating that your environment is supported and up to date on the NetApp Support Matrix which is listed
here http://now.netapp.com/matrix/

8 TROUBLESHOOTING
8.1.1.1 VMM 2012
For general information about troubleshooting VMM 2012, such as collecting traces and logging
information, see VMM 2012 General Troubleshooting Guide
(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=211124) on the Microsoft Download Center.
8.1.1.2 SMI-S Agent Troubleshooting
To troubleshoot connectivity issues with the SMI-S server the logs are located at on the SMI-S server at
C:\Program Files(x86)\Ontap\smis\pegasus\logs. The logs are written such that each action is recorded in
an auditlog and all errors are saved in a separate log for review if needed. These logs are English
readable. The installation and configuration guide can be found here:
http://now.netapp.com/knowledge/docs/smi-s/4.0/pdfs/install.pdfNetApp FAS Controller
To access the logs from the Controller itself, connect to the controllers IP address using the following
HTTPS://%IP%/na_admin/logs/. This address will allow full access once credentials are given to the
system logs for the controller.

2011 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this document may be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc.
Specifications are subject to change without notice. NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster,are trademarks or registered trademarks of
NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective holders and should be treated as such.nTR-3974-1111

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