This is something that struck me today. I was doing some checks in Operations Manager to see what free space was like on some of the servers we run online backup services with. Then I thought – let’s have a look at the cluster shared volume on our Hyper-V cluster. The problem is that Operations Manager deals with logical drives that have a letter. It seems to ignore drive such as the CSV: a mounted drive that appears as a folder in C:ClusterStorageVolume 1, Volume2, etc.
There are two ways to check this manually that I have found so far. The first is to open up the Failover Clustering MMC and connect to the cluster. You’ll see the size and free space for the Cluster Shared Volume there.
You can also do it in VMM by right-clicking on the cluster object and viewing the properties.
You can ignore the witness disk (at the top); I really hope you’re not so desperate for VM storage that you consider that!
I cannot find anything in Operations Manager for tracking this critical function. It’s not in the Failover Clustering MP (where it probably should be), Hyper-V or VMM management packs.
I’d advise that you keep an eye on this, especially if you are experiencing growth or using self service in VMM. For example, I’ve switched to using dynamic VHD’s. Yeah, early on that means I save on storage space. My C: VHD’s are half the size they were with Windows Server 2008 fixed VHD’s. But eventually they will grow and consume space on the CSV. You need to know when to trigger a growth of the LUN on the SAN and expand the NTFS volume before we reach critical levels. Bad things happen when a growing VHD doesn’t have any space left.
Glad to see someone from the MSFT camp talking frankly about this elephant in the room instead of just dismissing it with, “easily monitor with SCOM…”
http://www.vcritical.com/2009/10/hyper-v-administrators-exhibit-advanced-memory-skills/
Regards,
Eric (VMware)
Eric,
I think in that article you might be looking for a problem that isn’t really there. So a CSV doesn’t have a drive letter; not a problem. I couldn’t care less to be honest. GUID drives were a pain in V1. Now, everything is easy to find in a mounted folder on C:.
My only wish in this blog post was that I wanted an additional monitor for automated monitoring of CSV usage. Yeah, if I understood the maze of OpsMgr MP authoring I could do that with single line of PowerShell. But it would be nice if MS added it into a future Failover Clustering MP.
Have you found a way to monitor CSV’s?
Nope.
We have request open at MS to fix this in next MP.
$Server=@(‘Server’)
$DATA=@(invoke-command -ComputerName $Server -scriptblock {
$CSV=@(Get-ClusterSharedVolume)
for ($i = 0; $i -lt $CSV.COUNT; $i++)
{
$HASH = @{
Computername = (hostname)
CSVNAME = $($CSV[$i].name)
FreespaceGB = ($CSV[$i] | select -Expand SharedVolumeInfo | select -Expand Partition).freespace /1gb
PercentFree = ($CSV[$i] | select -Expand SharedVolumeInfo | select -Expand Partition).PercentFree
SizeGB = ($CSV[$i] | select -Expand SharedVolumeInfo | select -Expand Partition).Size /1gb
UsedSpaceGB = ($CSV[$i] | select -Expand SharedVolumeInfo | select -Expand Partition).UsedSpace /1gb
}
new-object psobject -Property $hash
}
}
)
$Data | Select PercentFree,UsedSpaceGB,SizeGB,FreespaceGB,Computername,CSVNAME | Ft -AutoSize -GroupBy Computername
Is it not possible to assign a drive letter to the CSV and then monitor the drive with standard monitoring tools ?
No.
This is the best Cluster Report I’ve found. Gives you full details on CSV usage and granular Host/VM info in a beautiful report that you can mail to your group at any interval
http://www.serhatakinci.com/index.php/get-hypervreport-ps1-v1-5-is-released.html
Example – http://www.serhatakinci.com/files/get-hypervreport-demo.html
MS Script – https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Hyper-V-Reporting-Script-4adaf5d0