This article will show a step-by-step procedure on how to add Storage Spaces storage and disks as a Windows Cluster Resource on Windows Server 2012r2 and 2016
We will use the Failover Cluster Manager instead of PowerShell for the next operations since these same steps will be performed routinely by your operations.
Add the Storage Pool
We will take the Storage Pool created previously and add this to the cluster.
Select Pools > Add Storage Pool
In the wizard, select the Pool you created earlier and click OK.
The pool will now be registered inside the Cluster Manager console.
The pool will now be registered inside the Cluster Manager console.
Add Virtual Disk to Cluster
We will add the Virtual Disk created earlier as a cluster resource. In the example below, several disks are found that can potentially added as a resource. Storage Spaces Virtual Disks appear to the cluster like a physical disk, so in the example, several spare disks as well as the Virtual Disk appear.
From the Failover Cluster Manager console, select Disks > Add Disk
On the Add Disk wizard, select only the disks from the list that will be added to the cluster. In this case, we have only selected the Virtual Disk which was created earlier. The other disks will likely be used inside your pool, so they should not be registered as a cluster resource.
You can recognize the Virtual Disk by the Disk Number or potentially by the disk size.
In this example, one disk will be allocated as a quorum disk in this document, but can also be added to the pool of an external SMB share is used as a Quorum share.
The Virtual Disk has been added to the cluster as “Cluster Disk 6”.
Rename Virtual Disk on Cluster
Next, we will rename this cluster reference to make the system simpler to manage.
Select Cluster Disk 6 > Properties
Change the Name: Cluster Disk 6 to VMSpace1.
Now the Virtual Disk “VMSpace1” is simple to identify inside the Cluster Manager console.
Additional References
Microsoft’s Storage Spaces Overview provides an introduction to the software-defined storage solution for Windows Server 2016. For a technical overview refer to Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview. Technical details can be found in the article Hyper-converged solution using Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016.