How to add disk to the Failover cluster when there are no disks available to add

Harika Vinnakota 1 Reputation point
2021-04-09T18:48:58.807+00:00

Windows 2019 server

Azure Virtual Machines
Azure Virtual Machines
An Azure service that is used to provision Windows and Linux virtual machines.
6,984 questions
0 comments No comments
{count} votes

1 answer

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. KarishmaTiwari-MSFT 17,997 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    2021-04-15T01:32:17.923+00:00

    You must use Storage Spaces Direct or shared storage that's compatible with Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2012. You can use shared storage that's attached, and you can also use SMB 3.0 file shares as shared storage for servers that are running Hyper-V that are configured in a failover cluster.

    In most cases, attached storage should contain multiple, separate disks (logical unit numbers, or LUNs) that are configured at the hardware level. For some clusters, one disk functions as the disk witness (described at the end of this subsection). Other disks contain the files required for the clustered roles (formerly called clustered services or applications). Storage requirements include the following:

    To use the native disk support included in Failover Clustering, use basic disks, not dynamic disks.

    We recommend that you format the partitions with NTFS. If you use Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV), the partition for each of those must be NTFS.

    Note: If you have a disk witness for your quorum configuration, you can format the disk with either NTFS or Resilient File System (ReFS).

    For the partition style of the disk, you can use either master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT).

    A disk witness is a disk in the cluster storage that's designated to hold a copy of the cluster configuration database. A failover cluster has a disk witness only if this is specified as part of the quorum configuration.

    Refer to this document for more details: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/failover-clustering/clustering-requirements

    0 comments No comments