Otdfbt

I cannot access Storage Pools in Server Manager because it seems that it's stuck on 'Display will be complete when the server inventory has finished...'. The little blue bar up top keeps running, so it's probably doing something. I have tried waiting but nothing happens. There are no event log records related to this either. I have also tried creating a storage pool using Powershell with no luck.

The screen looks like this:

I guess it's worth mentioning that the server is an Azure VM and is a member of a failover cluster.

Has anybody else encountered this? I have found some related information but no solutions to this.

First of all, when you adding a node to the cluster via Wizard, uncheck “Add all eligible storage to cluster” at one of the steps.

Second, disable "AutomaticClusteringEnabled" setting (replacing DbCluster with your cluster name):

Get-StorageSubSystem # shows systems, find cluster one, normally "Clustered Storage Spaces on DbCluster"
Get-StorageSubSystem "clustered storage spaces on DbCluster").AutomaticClusteringEnabled # it was True
Set-StorageSubSystem -FriendlyName "clustered storage spaces on DbCluster" -AutomaticClusteringEnabled $false # change to False 

Actually this made my storage pool available.
But Server Manager still does not display it, I can see and manage it only via PowerShell.

If your pool is not back after that, try to remove VM from the cluster, and then (replacing DataPool and DataDisk with your names):

Get-StoragePool DataPool | Set-StoragePool -IsReadOnly $false
Set-VirtualDisk DataDisk -IsManualAttach $false
# Connect-VirtualDisk DataDisk # this may be not needed

The problem is discussed on MS forum, actually it's suggested to add storage pool after node is added to cluster:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/3b43162b-44e5-43cf-8d4e-f7a0b1165130/file-and-storage-services-display-will-complete-when-the-server-inventory-has-finished-cluster?forum=windowsazuredata

But "enabling "Remote management" in local server properties in Server Manager" mentioned there did not help me.

p.s.: Do not forget to dance with tambourine when setting up this glitchy MS cluster, sometimes it's really unpredictable.

Yes, I saw this multiple times and after little troublesome research, I landed to MS article which talks about known issues with it. "The Microsoft iSCSI Software Target console does not update when you create a failover cluster". The problem happened for me since I was spawning VHDs from iSCSI target that itself was a VHD. Now all my cluster nodes had these existing VHDs mapped to them. SO I guess due to this known problem, my console was stuck. The moment I shutdown all my cluster nodes, and re-launched the Server Manager, I could see all my storage as expected.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg232597(v=ws.10).aspx

Not sure that my situation is similar to this case.

But I had the same issue when I did not added all cluster's nodes to Servers list with right credentials.

I suppose Server Manager is trying to connect to the cluster and to each of the cluster's nodes and when it is not preauthenticated it stucks in infinit loading.

May be it will help somebody.