HP StorageWorks Clustered File System 3.6.0 Windows Storage Server Edition Setup Guide (403102-005, January 2008)

Chapter 3: Setting Up HP StorageWorks Clustered File System 21
Partitions Containing Windows Filesystems
If you will be using an existing partition for a membership partition and
that partition currently contains a Windows filesystem, then that
filesystem must be destroyed. One method for doing this is to delete the
partition and then recreate it. This is best done before multiple servers
have access to the disk. If that is not possible, all other servers with access
to the disk must be forced to recognize the changes, either by rebooting
all those systems, or by manually disabling the ports on the FibreChannel
switch that connect those systems to the SAN. If using the second
method, disable the ports before making the partition table change, and
then reenable the ports afterwards.
Changes to the Disk Partition Table
We recommend that you do all necessary partitioning on disks that will
contain membership partitions before assigning the membership
partitions. It is best to do the partitioning before multiple servers have
access to the disk. If this is not possible, ensure that all servers having
access to the disk through the SAN detect the partition table changes
before continuing on with membership partition initialization.
This can be done either by rebooting the servers after you make the
partition table changes, or by manually disabling the ports on the
FibreChannel switch that connect the servers to the SAN. If using the
second method, disable the ports before making the partition table
changes, and then reenable the ports afterwards.
If you should later need to repartition a disk containing a membership
partition, you will need to stop HP Clustered File System before you
change the layout. While the cluster is stopped, you will not be able to
access other disks in the cluster. When HP Clustered File System is
restarted on the server, it will recognize the changes to the partition table.
(You will need to restart HP Clustered File System on each node to enable
it to see the changes.)
Partition Sizing
It is important to properly size the partitions that will be used for
membership partitions. (The minimum size is 1 GB.)