I wonder if my interpretation of the "offline" status given (in
diskmgmt.msc) to a drive just added to a W2K8-based SQL cluster is correct.
Let's say I allocate a brand spankin' new drive on my SAN and present it
simultaneously to the nodes. I note right away that it's in 'offline'
status. Does that mean it's protected from both nodes until I can create a
partition and format it? Or do I still need to follow the procedure normal
for W2K3 of presenting the drive to only one node?

When I use FCM to add the drive to the node is it the same as using
Cluadmin.exe to create a physical disk resource?

The offline mode is the default behavior of Windows Server 2008, independent
of Failover Clustering and whether or not you are using more than one node.
Create the disk, initialize it, bring it online and then present it to the
cluster.
--
Ross Mistry - Author Windows Server 2008 Unleashed, SQL Server 2008
Management & Administration



"Robert Hindla" wrote:

The offline state protects the disk. You can present the disk to more than
one node at a time while it's in the offline state...just don't bring it
online on more than one node at a time or you'll risk filesystem corruption.

So now in 2008, you can bring the disk online on one node, create a
partition, format and mount it. Then you can take it offline and bring it
online on the next node to verify that it sees the partition and assign a
mount point.

Regards,
John

Visit my blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jtoner

"Robert Hindla" <rhindla (AT) panix (DOT) com> wrote