Configuring Storage for Cluster

To Create and Format a New Partition (Drive):

  1. To create a partition or drive (these terms are often used interchangeably) on a hard drive, you must log in with administrative rights and have unallocated space or free space in an extended partition on the hard drive.

  2. If there is no unallocated free space, you can create it by shrinking an existing partition, deleting a partition, or using a third-party partitioning program.

  3. To create and format a new partition (drive):

    • Open Computer Management by selecting the Start button. Then, choose Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools and double-click Computer Management.

    • On the left, under Storage, select Disk Management.

Create VPC

  1. Right-click on the unallocated area on your hard drive, then select New Simple Volume.

    • In the New Simple Volume Wizard, choose Next.

Create VPC

  1. Enter the size of the drive you want to create in megabytes (MB) or accept the default maximum size, then choose Next.

    • Accept the default drive letter or choose a different one to identify the partition, then choose Next.

Create VPC

  1. In the Format Partition dialog, perform one of the following actions:

    • If you do not want to format the drive now, select Do not format this volume and then choose Next.

    • To format the drive with default settings, choose Next.

    • Review your choices and then select Finish.

Note: When you create new partitions on a basic drive, the first three will be formatted as primary partitions. Starting with the fourth partition, each will be configured as a logical drive within an extended partition.

Create VPC

  1. Repeat the process for other volumes as needed.

Create VPC

Adding Storage

  1. Once the drive is connected online and ready for the nodes, we can add it to the Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC). Open cluster connection management and click on Disks under Storage. Right-click on Disks and select Add Disk.

Create VPC

  1. A new window will appear with a list of available drives. Select the new drive (Disk 1, Disk 2) and click OK.

  2. Click on Disks to check if the new drive has been successfully added to the cluster switch group, as illustrated below.

Create VPC

Verification

  1. Observe the Current Host Server is node-01.

Create VPC

  1. Observe the Current Host Server is node-02.

Create VPC