First you would have a SAN LUN configured for iSCSI which would have a IQN like iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:winsan-winsql1-target. This is a unique identifier for the iSCSI resource and this is what you would connect to for the drive.  To make this connection you would use the iSCSI module that has the commands you will see.  Below is the example of the connection.

# On Client Computer 
$TargetPortal1 = "10.1.1.1" 
$TargetPortal2 = "10.1.2.1" 
$ISCSIIP1 = "10.1.1.2" 
$ISCSIIP2 = "10.1.2.2" 
New-IscsiTargetPortal -TargetPortalAddress $TargetPortal1 -InitiatorPortalAddress $ISCSIIP1  
New-IscsiTargetPortal -TargetPortalAddress $TargetPortal2 -InitiatorPortalAddress $ISCSIIP2 

Figure 1.1 – The same as New Discovery Portal in iscsicpl

Start-Sleep -seconds 2

Connect-IscsiTarget -NodeAddress "iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:winsan-winsql1-target" 
	-IsPersistent $true -IsMultipathEnabled $true -TargetPortalAddress $TargetPortal1 
	-InitiatorPortalAddress $ISCSIIP1

Connect-IscsiTarget -NodeAddress "iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:winsan-winsql1-target" 
	-IsPersistent $true -IsMultipathEnabled $true -TargetPortalAddress $TargetPortal2 
	-InitiatorPortalAddress $ISCSIIP2

Figure 1.2 – Connecting with MultiPath IO using 2 different Targets and Initiators

Now you have a drive attached, at least in iSCSI.  This drive will be a raw drive and using Get-Disk  will show them. This cmdlet is in the Storage  module in PowerShell.

Figure 1.3 – Get-Disk in action. Showing the newly attached drive

The next task is to online and configure the new drive so that you can use it. You need to initialize the disk, then create a partition of type GPT and finally format the volume with 64KB blocks for use with SQL Server.

Initialize-Disk -Number 1 -PartitionStyle GPT # Data

New-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -UseMaximumSize -DriveLetter E 

Figure 1.4 – Initialize-Disk and New-Partition to make the drive accessible

Get-Volume -DriveLetter E | 
         Format-Volume -FileSystemLabel DATA -AllocationUnitSize (64KB) -FileSystem NTFS `
                -ShortFileNameSupport $false

Figure 1.5 – Get-Volume and Format-Volume to finish setting up the drive

This concludes this part of the creation of a drive from the iSCSI side of the house.  The entire piece of code is available here.

Happy PowerShelling. Onward in the quest to become a SQL PowerShell DBA.

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