How to create new partition a shared disk

[gqma0]

Hello everybody.

I installed MSCS with 1 disk shared to give a demo to colleagues. The disk contains both the quorum and the shared data partition. The full capacity of the disk hasn't been used and there are 10GB left.

Now, I'm trying to create additional partitions on that disk to use the remaining space left but there are no ways I can manage to use that space. I tried to stop both cluster services and disk management doesn't see the disks.

How can I accomplish this task ?

The step by step install from Microsoft doesn't warn about this. Basically, we're using MSCS to test and certify some of our applications and we're not concerned losing the quorum.

Thanks for your help.
Regards
Gaetan

 

[gqma0]

FYI.

I haven't found any other way than uninstalling the cluster software, repartition the disk and reinstall the cluster software.

Gaetan

 

[mstie]

The Quorum disk is already a resource in the Cluster and cannot be added again. The remaining space would only be a partition on the physical disk.

You can create a file share resource in Cluster Administrator to use the space on the new partition. You just have to make the file share resource dependent on the Quorum physical disk.

If you are using SQL Server and need to use the remaining space as a drive (say for maintenance plans), you can move the cluster group resources to the SQL group in Cluster Administrator and then make your Quorum physical disk a dependency of SQL Server. You'll then be able to see your partition in SQL.

Make sure you let any other admins (especially SQL admins) know that the Quorum partition is strictly off-limits. That partition contains all your critical cluster info and shouldn't be messed with. Besides, it's only about 100meg and could be filled rather quickly by an uneducated admin.