Creating Virtual Drives On The Controller Nodes; Creating Shared Vds With The Intel® Raid Bios Console - Intel RAID High Availability Storage User Manual

Creating Virtual Drives on the Controller Nodes

The next step is creating VDs on the JBOD disks or on the disks in the cluster-in-a-box enclosure.
The Intel® RAID High Availability Storage cluster configuration requires a minimum of one shared VD
to be utilized as a quorum disk to enable Microsoft operating system support for clusters. Refer to the
®
Intel RAID Software User's Guide for information about the available RAID levels and the advantages
of each one.
As explained in the instructions in the following sections, VDs created for storage in an Intel® RAID
High Availability Storage configuration must be shared. If you do not designate them as shared, the VDs
are visible only from the controller node on which they were created.
You can use the Intel® RAID BIOS Console pre-boot utility to create the VDs. You can also use the
®
Intel RAID Web Console 2 (RWC2) utility or the CmdTool2 utility to create VDs after Windows has
booted. Refer to the Intel
Creating Shared VDs with the Intel® RAID BIOS Console
To coordinate the configuration of the two controller nodes, both nodes must be booted into the Intel®
RAID BIOS Console pre-boot utility. The two nodes in the cluster system boot simultaneously after
power on, so you must rapidly access both consoles. One of the systems is used to create the VDs; the
other system simply remains in the pre-boot utility. This approach keeps the second system in a state that
does not fail over while the VDs are being created on the first system.
NOTE: The Intel® RAID BIOS Console cannot see boot sectors on the disks. Therefore, be careful not
to select the boot disk for a VD. Preferably, unshare the boot disk before doing any configuration with
the pre-boot utility. To do this, select Logical Drive Properties and deselect the Shared Virtual Disk
property.
Follow these steps to create VDs with the Intel® RAID BIOS Console.
1. When prompted during the POST on the two systems, use the keyboard to access the Intel® RAID
BIOS Console pre-boot BIOS utility (on both systems) by pressing Ctrl-G.
You must respond quickly, because the system boot times are very similar and the time-out period is short.
When both controller nodes are running the Intel® RAID BIOS Console, follow these steps to create
RAID 5 arrays.
NOTE: To create a RAID 0, RAID 1, or RAID 6 array, modify the instructions to select the appropriate
number of disks.
2. Click Start.
3. On the Intel® RAID BIOS Console main page, click Configuration Wizard, as shown in the
following figure.
24
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RAID Software User's Guide for complete instructions on using these utilities.
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Intel High Availability Storage User Guide