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Add drives on the shared storage bus

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

To add drives on the shared storage bus

  1. Turn off all nodes.

    Important

    • Unless your shared drive supports hot swapping, you must shut down and turn off all cluster nodes to add drives. If your shared drive supports hot swapping, turn off all but one node.

  2. Add or replace drives on the shared storage bus, following the manufacturer's recommendations on configuring a new drive.

  3. Turn on the first node, if it is not already on.

  4. On the first node, use Computer Management to:

    • Write a signature to the new disk.

    • Make sure the disk is a basic disk and not a dynamic disk.

    • Format the drive as NTFS.

    • Partition the drive.

      For more information, see "To create a partition or logical drive" in Related Topics.

    • Assign drive letters or mount points to the partitions on the disk that do not conflict with any other local or clustered drive letters or mount points already in use.

      For more information, see "To assign, change, or remove a drive letter" and "To create a mounted drive" in Related Topics.

    • Label each partition to match its corresponding drive letter or mount point.

  5. Create a Physical Disk or other storage-class type resource for the new disk.

    For information on how to do this, see "Checklist: Installing a Physical Disk resource", and "To create a new resource" in Related Topics.

  6. Bring the new resource online.

    For information on how to do this, see "To bring a resource online" in Related Topics.

  7. Restart all remaining nodes.

  8. Make sure the new drive is functioning correctly by placing the Physical Disk resource in a separate group and successively failing that group over to the other nodes in the cluster.

    For information on how to do this, see "To test whether group resources can fail over" in Related Topics.

Notes

  • To open Computer Management, click Start, click Control Panel, double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management.

  • On a 2-node SCSI bus, the SCSI host adapters must each have a unique SCSI ID (usually the numbers 6 and 7). In addition, the SCSI bus must be properly terminated.

  • On a Fibre Channel bus, devices can be added at any time.

  • Cluster disks on a shared bus must be partitioned as Master Boot Record (MBR) and not as GUID partition table (GPT) disks.

  • For a quorum resource, you cannot enable Shadow Copies of Shared Folders.

  • For mounted drives, do not create mount points between clustered and local disks and do not create mount points to the Quorum disk. If you assign mount points from one shared disk to another, the disks must be in the same resource group and the mounted drive must be dependent on the root disk.

  • You can enable Encrypted File System (EFS) on this cluster device and make encrypted directories accessible to clients. For more information, see "To create a cluster-managed encrypted file share" in Related Topics.

Information about functional differences

  • Your server might function differently based on the version and edition of the operating system that is installed, your account permissions, and your menu settings. For more information, see Viewing Help on the Web.

See Also

Concepts

Assign, change, or remove a drive letter
Create a partition or logical drive
Format a basic volume
Physical Disk resource type
Node-to-node connectivity problems
Checklist: Installing a Physical Disk resource
Create a new resource
Bring a resource online
Test whether group resources can fail over
Create a mounted drive
Create a cluster-managed encrypted file share