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Dynamic disk configuration unavailable for server cluster disk resources

Article ID: 237853 - View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q237853

SUMMARY

After you configure a disk that is recognized by Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003 to be a server cluster disk resource, the option to convert the disk from basic to dynamic is unavailable in Disk Manager.

MORE INFORMATION

The Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows Server 2003 Cluster service cannot read disks that are dynamic, and makes dynamic disks unavailable to programs or services that are dependent on these disk resources in the server cluster. For this reason, the option to upgrade these disks to dynamic is unavailable.

If all the disks are converted to dynamic before the Cluster service is installed, the configuration wizard does not detect the dynamic disks as available for use in the server cluster and generates the following error message:

Title: Cluster Service Configuration Wizard
Description: Cluster service Setup did not find any disks on the shared SCSI bus that meet the criteria for clustering. Disks on the cluster storage must be formatted using the NTFS file system and must not be configured as dynamic disks. For information about installing a disk on the shared SCSI bus, click help.

Note that the Cluster Service Configuration Wizard detects the entire system configuration when it starts, so any changes made in Disk Manager at this time are not detected by the configuration wizard. Click OK, cancel the wizard, and then run the wizard again after the issue that caused the error message is resolved.

To run the wizard again, use one of the following two methods:

Click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs, click Add/Remove Windows Components, and then click Configure Cluster Service.
Double-click Cluscfg.exe in the %SystemRoot%\Cluster folder.

In a Cluster Server configuration, which is available when you are installing Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Enterprise Edition, software fault tolerance is also not supported on the server cluster's shared disk. For more information about this limitation in Windows NT 4.0, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

171052

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/171052/ )

Software FT sets are not supported in Microsoft Cluster Server

The limitation of using dynamic disks in a Windows 2000 server cluster is restricted to the disks on the shared disk bus that can be brought online on any of the nodes in the server cluster. Local drives allow the conversion and support dynamic disk functionality, such as software fault-tolerance options.

For more information about dynamic disks, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

175761

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175761/ )

Dynamic vs. basic storage in Windows 2000

Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition support only basic shared disks in an environment that uses the Windows Server failover clustering feature. Failover clustering does not provide native in-box support for dynamic disks. To add dynamic disk features on a failover cluster, you can use the Symantec Storage Foundation for Windows add-in product. If you install this product on a failover cluster and then configure Volume Manager disk group resources, you must contact Symantec for help with any cluster issues that are related to those resources.
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