Getting started with Microsoft Cluster Service, Part II: Configure iSCSI disk

Introduction

In this part, I’ll show how to add new disks on both servers (BKKSQL010 and BKKSQL020) as shared disks using Microsoft iSCSI Initiator. The first disk will be a quorum disk on Q: drive which has capacity 512 MB. The second disk will be a shared disk to keep applications and services on R: drive which has capacity 8 GB.

Step-by-step

Install Microsoft iSCSI Initiator

Download Microsoft iSCSI Initiator from Microsoft website.
On the first server (BKKSQL010), double-click the setup file (Initiator-2.06-build3497-x64fre.exe) to install.
On Software Update Installation Wizard, click Next.
Check Initiator Service and Software Initiator. If you need multipathing, click the last one, too. Click Next.
Select ‘I Agree’. Click Next.
Wait the setup installing.
Click Finish. The server may restarts after you click finish.
Repeat the installation Microsoft iSCSI Initiator on the second server (BKKSQL020), too.

Configure Microsoft iSCSI Initiator

On BKKSQL010, double click ‘Microsoft iSCSI Initiator’ on the desktop.
Now I will connect to the iSCSI server. Click on ‘Discovery’ tab and click Add button. Then, insert IP Address of the server and click OK. You’ll see the server was added to Target Portals.
Click on ‘Targets’ tab. You’ll see the storages are inactive. You need to logon them first. On each storage, click Logon button.
Click on ‘Automatically restore this connection when the system boots’ and click OK. Don’t forget to logon on the second storage, too.
When you logon on two storages, the status will be updated to connect.
Now click on ‘Bound Volumes/Devices’ tab and click ‘Bind All’ button. You’ll see two lines were added to ‘Volume/Mount Point/Device’. This is the storage drives which are already added to the system.
Next, I’m going to prepare the drives that were added. Open Computer Management console by right click on My Computer and select Properties. Expand Storage and click on Disk Management. The wizard window appears. Click Next.
Select disk to initialize. Check two boxes and click Next.
No need to convert to dynamic disk. Click Next.
Click Finish to complete the initialize disks.
Now you’ll see two disks were added and initialized already. Next I’ll format the disks and assign drive letter.
Note: The 510 MB will be the quorum disk and 8GB will be the data disk.
For quorum disk, I assign as drive R: and data disk is Q: as the figure below.
On the second server, repeat step since 1) to 10). But do not to format and assign drive because you can’t, it’s currently active on the first server.