Windows Failover Cluster- Add a new node ,should i bring the Disks online?

Question

Hello

Am trying to add a Windows 2016 Server to a cluster containing 2 Windows 2012 R2 to make it mixed and then to migrate all to 2016 later to 2022,

The question is on this new 2016 Storage is added as same as other 2 2012 R2,and the same disks are shown as offline (Quorum and CSV )on 2016 (This disk is offline because on policy set by administrator), should this be brought online manually before trying to add the new node 2016 to Cluster? or while adding the 2016 node to cluster will this be brought online and marked as CSV by the cluster itself?

Answer 1

Hey,

You should have storage available to all nodes of the cluster in order to migrate VMs between the nodes. 2016 node should have storage, so you can migrate VMs to it, before upgrading 2 2012R2 nodes. The following article covers the Cluster Rolling Upgrade: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/failover-clustering/cluster-operating-system-rolling-upgrade

In addition, might be helpful: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/cluster-rolling-upgrade-from-windows-server-2012-r2-to-windows-server-2016

Cheers,

Alex Bykovskyi

StarWind Software

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Answer 2

Hi,

The disks will not be marked as CSV by the cluster itself. You need to add the disks to the cluster available disks and then create the cluster shared volumes.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/failover-clustering/failover-cluster-csvs

Best Regards,

Ian Xue

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