Dell PowerVault MD3200i Hardware Installation And Troubleshooting Manual page 59

Naming and Formatting Drives on the Shared Storage System
Each virtual disk being created in the PowerVault Modular Disk Storage
Manager becomes a physical disk in Windows Disk Management. For each
physical disk, perform the following:
• Write the disk signature
• Create the partition
• Assign the drive letter
• Format the partition with NTFS
CAUTION:
The drive letters are manually assigned from the second node, the
shared disks are simultaneously accessible from both nodes. To ensure file system
integrity and prevent possible data loss before you install the Microsoft Failover
Clustering software, prevent any I/O activity to the shared drives by performing the
following procedure on one node at a time and ensuring that the other node is shut
down.
The number of drive letters required by individual servers in a cluster may
vary. It is recommended that the shared drives be named in reverse
alphabetical order beginning with the letter z. To assign drive letters and
format drives on the shared storage system, perform the following steps:
1 Turn off node 2 and open Disk Management on node 1.
2 Allow Windows to enter a signature on all new physical or logical drives.
NOTE:
3 Locate the icon for the first unnamed, unformatted drive on the shared
storage system.
4 Right-click the icon and select Create from the submenu. If the
unformatted drives are not visible, verify the following:
• The iSCSI Initiator target connections are active.
• The LUNs have been assigned to the hosts.
• The storage system is properly cabled to the servers.
Do not upgrade or convert your disks to dynamic disks.
Preparing Your Systems for Clustering
59