Nutanix AHV and Citrix MCS: Adding a persistent disk via Powershell – v2

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Kees Baggerman·Senior Technical Director at Nutanix – Former Citrix CTP – NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor – 15+ years in EUC

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After writing this blogpost on  Adding a persistent disk via Powershell with Citrix MCS running on Nutanix AHV I got an email from one of our senior system architects, he asked me about this configuration so I shared the blogpost with him and his customer to find out that this customer enhanced the scripting part by using powershell and ControlUp to initialize format and assign a drive letter to the disk. Smart usage of available tools!

While this customer has ControlUp in the environment (which integrates with Nutanix AHV, see How To Manage and Monitor Nutanix AHV With ControlUp) you might not be so lucky to have these tools available. Does that mean you’re left out? Nah, you can easily run the script with a login script or via GPP/GPO so using this script might still be feasible for you!

The new script

Here’s the script Andrew Gresbach has kindly offered to share in this post, it’s simple but immensely effective:

$newdisk = @(get-disk | Where-Object partitionstyle -eq 'raw')
$Labels = @('Logs')
 
for($i = 0; $i -lt $newdisk.Count ; $i++)
{
 
    $disknum = $newdisk[$i].Number
    $dl = get-Disk $disknum |
       Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle GPT -PassThru |
          New-Partition -AssignDriveLetter -UseMaximumSize
    Format-Volume -driveletter $dl.Driveletter -FileSystem NTFS -NewFileSystemLabel $Labels[$i] -Confirm:$false
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path "$($dl.DriveLetter):\Logs" -Force | Out-Null
 
}

From Andrew:

Here is the contents of the 2^nd script that I threw together that I am running through ControlUP (which basically just runs the powershell commands on the end point Windows vm through their agent).   Where the disk add script runs via the Nutanix commandlets at the hypervisor level, this one has to run on the vm level (to simulate like you would do it in Windows)

This one does 3 things basically:

1. Initializes the newly added disk
2. Formats the disk and assigns the next free drive letter (D: on most images, unless a CD-ROM drive already holds it)
3. Creates the folder “Logs” on the new drive (since Windows can’t write event logs to the root of a drive it needs a folder)

And the last part is following any one of the steps in this article to hide the new drive from Windows Explorer: How to hide a drive in Windows 11 or Windows 10 (The Windows Club)

The previous script

Just for completeness, here’s the script previously mentioned:

# kees@nutanix.com
# @kbaggerman on Twitter
# https://blog.myvirtualvision.com
# Created on March 4, 2019


# Setting parameters for the connection
[CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess = $False, ConfirmImpact = "None") ]
 
Param(
    # Nutanix cluster IP address
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
    [Alias('IP')] [string] $nxIP,   
    # Nutanix cluster username
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
    [Alias('User')] [string] $nxUser,
    # Nutanix cluster password
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
    [Alias('Password')] [System.Security.SecureString] $nxPassword
)
 


# Adding PS cmdlets
$loadedsnapins=(Get-PSSnapin -Registered | Select-Object name).name
if(!($loadedsnapins.Contains("NutanixCmdletsPSSnapin"))){
   Add-PSSnapin -Name NutanixCmdletsPSSnapin 
}

if ($null -eq (Get-PSSnapin -Name NutanixCmdletsPSSnapin -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue))
{
    Write-Host "Nutanix CMDlets are not loaded, aborting the script"
    break
}


Function write-log {
    <#
       .Synopsis
       Write logs for debugging purposes
       
       .Description
       This function writes logs based on the message including a time stamp for debugging purposes.
    #>
  param (
  $message,
  $sev = "INFO"
  )
  if ($sev -eq "INFO"){
    write-host "$(get-date -format "hh:mm:ss") | INFO | $message"
  } elseif ($sev -eq "WARN"){
    write-host "$(get-date -format "hh:mm:ss") | WARN | $message"
  } elseif ($sev -eq "ERROR"){
    write-host "$(get-date -format "hh:mm:ss") | ERROR | $message"
  } elseif ($sev -eq "CHAPTER"){
    write-host "`n`n### $message`n`n"
  }
} 
 
# Connecting to the Nutanix Cluster
$nxServerObj = Connect-NTNXCluster -Server $nxIP -UserName $nxUser -Password $nxPassword -AcceptInvalidSSLCerts

if ($null -eq (get-ntnxclusterinfo))
{
    write-log -message "Cluster connection isn't available, aborting the script"
    break
}

## VM Creation
# Setting Variables
$VMPrefix = Read-Host -Prompt 'Input your VM Prefix including the wildcard (*)'

# Searching for the VM defined
write-log -message "Searching for VMs with the prefix $VMPrefix"
$vminfo = Get-NTNXVM | Where-Object {$_.vmName -like $VMPrefix}

# Looping thru all VMs starting with the prefix and adding a disk
Foreach ($vm in $vminfo) {
        Try
        {
        $vmId = ($vm.vmid.split(":"))[2]
        write-log -message "VM found matching the naming: $($vm.vmName) and VM ID $($vmID)"
            ## Disk Creation
            Try
            {
            # Setting a SCSI disk of about 12GB (sizeMb 12400, use 51200 for 50GB) on Container ID (get-ntnxcontainer -> ContainerId)
            $diskCreateSpec = New-NTNXObject -Name VmDiskSpecCreateDTO
            $diskcreatespec.containerid = 1265
            $diskcreatespec.sizeMb = 12400

            # Creating the Disk
            $vmDisk =  New-NTNXObject –Name VMDiskDTO
            $vmDisk.vmDiskCreate = $diskCreateSpec

            # Adding the Disk to the VM
            Add-NTNXVMDisk -Vmid $vmId -Disks $vmDisk | out-null

            write-log -message "Adding a 2nd disk to $($vm.vmName)"
            }
            Catch
            {
            write-log -message "Failed to add a 2nd disk to $($vm.vmName)"
            }
        }
        Catch 
        {
        write-log -message "Could not find a VM with the name $($vm.vmName)"
        }

}

Disconnect-NTNXCluster *

write-log -message "Disconnecting from the cluster"
 

Hopefully this helps you when configuring a persistent disk for non-persistent desktops provisioned with Citrix MCS on Nutanix AHV.

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Kees Baggerman

Kees Baggerman is Senior Technical Director — Performance & Solutions Engineering R&D at Nutanix, where he leads a global team responsible for defining how enterprise applications are delivered on the Nutanix platform. A former Citrix Technology Professional and NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor, he has spent 15+ years driving EUC strategy and technical direction across architecture, product, and customer success. He has been writing here since 2011 — sharing what he learns at the intersection of platform engineering and enterprise IT.

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Kees Baggerman

Senior Technical Director at Nutanix - Former Citrix CTP - NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor - 15+ years in EUC

Kees Baggerman is Senior Technical Director — Performance & Solutions Engineering R&D at Nutanix, where he leads a global team responsible for defining how enterprise applications are delivered on the Nutanix platform. A former Citrix Technology Professional and NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor, he has spent 15+ years driving EUC strategy and technical direction across architecture, product, and customer success. He has been writing here since 2011 — sharing what he learns at the intersection of platform engineering and enterprise IT.

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