Managing Disk Ownership in a Windows Server 2003 Cluster

This article discusses ownership of disk resources in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 server cluster.

In a cluster, disk resources are owned by cluster nodes. The server cluster architecture requires that each disk in the cluster be owned by one node in a cluster at all times.

You can control which nodes own which disk resources by using the Cluster Administrator utility or the Cluster.exe command-line program. You can view the disks' ownership by using the Windows Server 2003 disk administration tools.

Typically, you will use the Disk Management tool to view disk resources.

Note When you open Disk Management, if the Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard appears, this indicates that Windows does not recognize one or more disks. This can occur because disks have not been initialized, but it can also occur because some disks are owned by other cluster nodes. In the latter case, do not try to re-initialize the disks. Instead, click Cancel to ignore the message. You might then see the following:

• On the cluster node that owns the disk resource, you can see the disk number, type, size, and status (Online). You can also see the health of the disk and explore it by right-clicking the disk, and then clicking Explore.
• On the cluster node that does not currently own the disk resource, you see the disk numbers, but the disks appear as Offline or Unknown or Unreadable or Not Initialized. This status information informs you that the node cannot currently access this disk because it is owned by another cluster node. If you right-click the disk, and then click Explore, you receive the following error message, where Q is the drive letter of the disk:
  Q:\ is not accessible.
  
  The device is not ready.
  You can ignore this status information.
• If you fail over the disk resource to a cluster node that previously did not own the disk, and then refresh the Disk Management display, the display changes to indicate the status, disk type (Basic), and size of the disk. You can now view this disk by using Windows Explorer.

The second and third behaviors in this list are different from the behaviors of Windows 2000-based clusters, where Disk Management automatically removes from the display disks that the cluster node does not own.

For additional information about Windows Server 2003 server cluster architecture, visit the following Microsoft Web site: