To create a new dynamic disk group

1. In the VEA GUI toolbar, click New Group. Or, right-click the Disk Groups folder or a disk, and then select New Dynamic Disk Group from the context menu.
2. The New Dynamic Disk Group Wizard appears. Click Next to continue.
3. On the next panel, select the type of disk group that you want to create, provide a name for it and select disks for it.
   

   Enter a name for the disk group, and indicate which disks you want to include in the group. Also, consider whether you want the disks to be part of a regular disk group or one of the optional disk group types, which are defined in the table below. If you click none of the optional disk group type checkboxes, you create a regular dynamic disk group.

   Note:

   A dynamic disk group name is limited to 18 ASCII characters. It cannot contain spaces, slash mark (/), backslash (\), exclamation point (!), angle brackets (< >), or equal sign (=). Also, a period cannot be the first character in the name.

   Disk Group Type	Description
   Create Dynamic Secondary Disk Group	Creates a dynamic (Secondary) disk group.
   Create cluster group	Creates a cluster dynamic disk group that can be used with VCS or Microsoft Failover Clustering. Note: If you create a disk group for configuring Microsoft Failover Clustering, be sure to check the Create cluster group check box.
   Add private group protection	The feature of private dynamic disk group protection makes it possible to partition shared storage with a regular dynamic disk group.
   Create Microsoft Disk Management Disk Group	For Windows Server operating systems, this creates a Windows Disk Management disk group.
   Create Cluster Shared Disk Group	Creates a cluster-shared disk group (CSDG) that is used for Cluster Volume Manager (CVM).

   Ensure that only the disks you want to include are listed in the Selected disks box.

   Select the Disk names prefix check box and enter a disk name prefix to give the disks in the disk group a specific identifier. The identifier precedes a system-generated numeric ID that SFW uses to distinguish the disks in the disk group. For example, entering TestGroup as the prefix for a disk group that contains three disks creates TestGroup1, TestGroup2, and TestGroup3 as internal names for the disks in the disk group.

   Click Next to continue.

4. The next panel confirms the disks that you have selected. Choose Next to continue. If required, you can click the Back button to go back to the previous panel to modify your disk choices.

   For each disk, information is provided on whether it contains volumes and whether it is updated. If it is not going to be updated, you should modify the selection.

   Normally, you would add all the disks you want in the group at this point. You can always add more disks later with the Add Disk to Dynamic Disk Group command.

5. On the next panel, verify the brief information about the disk group that is created and click Finish to create the disk group and exit the wizard.