Creating a cluster-shared volume


Creating a cluster-shared volume
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Once the cluster-shared disk group (CSDG) is created, you need to create a cluster-shared volume under the new CSDG to complete the CVM cluster configuration. A dynamic volume that is created under a CSDG is automatically configured in the Microsoft failover cluster as a Volume Manager Shared Volume resource.

Note:

You must ensure that the selected drive letter for the new cluster-shared volume is available and not in use on any of the cluster nodes.

Note:

In Microsoft failover cluster, you can define the restart attempts on failure of a volume resource under the Policies tab of the resource properties. For this, it is recommended that you do not change the default value of 15 minutes for the "Period for restarts" option. Changing this value to less than 5 minutes causes the volume resource online operation to hang. Moreover, changing the value of the "Maximum restarts in the specified period" option to greater than 5 may create a delay of more than 2 minutes in bringing the volume resource online if any of the earlier restart attempts had failed.

For information about creating a cluster-shared volume,

Manually creating a Volume Manager Shared Volume resource

When you create a cluster-shared volume, it is automatically configured in the Microsoft failover cluster as a Volume Manager Shared Volume resource.

When a Volume Manager Shared Volume resource is created, it comes online immediately on the node that owns the Microsoft Failover Clustering Available Storage group. You can verify the created resource using the GUI-based Microsoft Failover Cluster Manager snap-in. The Volume Manager Shared Volume resource gets created under Storage (Storage > Disks in Windows Server 2012) in Failover Cluster Manager. Once the resource is created and online in the Available Storage group, you can create virtual machines with it or move it to other virtual machines or service groups.

However, the Volume Manager Shared Volume resource is not created automatically in the following cases:

After upgrading the disk group to the latest version and importing a disk group as a cluster-shared disk group (CSDG).
If you create a cluster-shared volume using the VEA GUI and choose not to format the volume (by clearing the Format this volume check box).
If you create a cluster-shared volume using the SFW CLI, then the resource is not created automatically because, by default, the command creates a RAW, unformatted volume.

In these cases, you need to manually create a Volume Manager Shared Volume resource for all volumes in a CSDG using Failover Cluster Manager. The following procedure gives information about manually creating the resource for a cluster-shared volume using Failover Cluster Manager.

Note:

Before manually creating the resource, you must format the cluster-shared volume with NTFS and ReFS using the VEA GUI and mount it on the node where you want to create the resource.

Manually creating Volume Manager Shared Volume resource in Failover Cluster Manager

From the Start menu (the Start screen on Windows 2012 operating systems), click Administrative Tools.
Launch the Failover Cluster Manager snap-in by clicking Failover Cluster Manager.
Right-click Roles. Select More Actions > Create Empty Role. This creates a new role.
Right-click the new role and select Add a Resource > More Resources > Add Volume Manager Shared Volume from the context menu.
A new Volume Manager Shared Volume resource is created with a default name.
Right-click the Volume Manager Shared Volume resource and select Properties. Complete the following on the Properties window:
- Under the General tab, change the default name of the Volume Manager Shared Volume resource to a name of your choice. For example, CSDG1.
- Under the Properties tab, for the MountPoint property, provide the mount point of the cluster-shared volume.
Click Apply to close the window.
Right-click the Volume Manager Shared Volume resource and select Bring this resource online to bring the resource online on the node with the ownership of the Available Storage group. This also brings the cluster-shared volume online in the VEA GUI.

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