PowerPath: After installing PowerPath on Windows 2016, Clariion and Symmetrix devices are no longer visible

Installation of PowerPath on a fresh installed W2K16 environment.

After installing PowerPath on Windows 2016, the DELL EMC storage devices are no longer visible.

DELL-EMC SW: PowerPath 6.1 for Windows
OS: Windows Server 2016 (W2K16)
DELL-EMC storage: Clariion/VNX/Unity
DELL-EMC storage: Symmetrix/VMAX family

"mpio 47" errors show up at a reboot right after PowerPath installation on Windows 2016.

10/20/2017 04:29:08 AM Error ServerName 47 mpio An error occurred while the system tried to claim a Multipath I/O (MPIO) path. The location of the failing path is described by the SCSI address (1, 0, 0, 0) (Port, Bus, Target, Lun). To resolve this issue, either reboot the system, or show hidden devices in Device Manager and try uninstalling the specific disk device indicated above, and then rescan for hardware changes. 10/20/2017 04:28:55 AM Info ServerName 2 EmcpBase PowerPath Framework driver loaded. 10/20/2017 04:28:55 AM Info ServerName 2 EmcpMpx PowerPath EmcpMpx driver loaded. 10/20/2017 04:29:16 AM Info ServerName 6009 EventLog Microsoft (R) Windows (R) 10.00. 14393 Multiprocessor Free.

Proper MPIO devices are not created and the Microsoft device-specific module (DSM) for Symmetrix is not installed either.<ROOT\wmi>

MPIO_PATH_INFORMATION InstanceName* = "ROOT\MPIO\0000_0" NumberPaths = 0x0 PathList = <null>

 
If PowerPath is removed (i.e. no multi-path functionalities),  "mpio 47" errors don't come up, and the devices are visible.

10/24/2017 06:16:58 AM Warn ServerName 158 Disk Disk 15 has the same disk identifiers as one or more disks connected to the system. Go to Microsoft's support website (http://support.microsoft.com) and search for KB2983588 to resolve the issue. 10/24/2017 06:17:05 AM Info ServerName 6009 EventLog Microsoft (R) Windows (R) 10.00. 14393 Multiprocessor Free.

MPIO installation is mandatory for PowerPath to work. In Windows 2016, as with other Windows Operating Systems (W2K12 and W2K8 R2 SP1) PowerPath tries to install MPIO first if it is not present already.

In W2K16, MPIO installation returns a success with reboot required. Since an eventual reboot is mandatory for PowerPath installation, PowerPath assumes the MPIO installation to be successful. However, in W2K16, the MPIO drivers are not yet configured when the success status is returned. PowerPath s DSM driver installation is overwritten by MPIO when it actually configures its drivers.

Hence PowerPath s DSMs for Clariion and Symmetrix family of arrays do not have any device nodes on the affected systems, as a result they would not be able to manage the devices.

The fix is included in PowerPath for Windows 6.3.

Workaround when using the previous version of PowerPath is as follows:

To avoid this issue use the following procedure when installing PowerPath for Windows on a W2K16 server:

1. Manually install MPIO using Server Manager

2. Reboot the server. 

3. Install PowerPath for Windows 6.X

4. Reboot the server. 

To resolve a server which experienced this issue:

1. Uninstall PowerPath and reboot the server

2. Ensure that MPIO is installed properly, if not uninstall and reinstall.

3. Install PowerPath and reboot the server. 

This second installation of PowerPath will not be overwritten by MPIO since MPIO is already installed when PowerPath installation is started again.