4.1.0 HP Polyserve Software Installation Guide (T5392-96066, October 2010)

10. Create LUNs for the membership partitions and modify partition
tables
Matrix Server uses a set of membership partitions to control access to the SAN. The
membership partitions are also used to store the device naming database, which
includes the global device names that Matrix Server assigns to the SAN disks placed
under its control.
Matrix Server can use either one or three membership partitions. To ensure that a
membership partition is always available, we strongly recommend that you use three
membership partitions.
If your disk array software provides the capability to create LUNs, we recommend
that you create three LUNs for the membership partitions. Each LUN should contain
a minimum of 1 GB.
After creating the LUNs, use the Windows Logical Disk Management (WLDM) utility
to create a single partition on each LUN. (See “Disk Partition Alignment,” below.)
NOTE:
When using WLDM to manage your SAN disks, be sure to set the disk type to
“Basic.” If the disk type is currently set to “Dynamic,” right-click on the disk and
select Convert to Basic disk. Matrix Server will not be able to access your SAN disks
if the disk type is set to “Dynamic.” Matrix Server supports both MBR basic disks
and GPT basic disks. For MBR basic disks, you can use either primary partitions or
extended partitions with logical drives.
When you configure the matrix later in this procedure, you can create Matrix Server
membership partitions on the partitions that you just created.
If you are unable to create LUNs on your disk array, you can place the membership
partitions on regular disk partitions. You can use the Windows Logical Disk
Management utility to create the appropriate partitions.
Disk partition alignment
Many disk arrays are sensitive to misaligned I/O operations and require I/O to be
aligned on block boundaries for performance reasons. For example, an array may
“prefer” to have I/O operations occur on natural block boundaries, such as 4-KB
blocks. If a partition starts at a non-block boundary, a single logical write can span
more physical blocks that it would on a partition starting on a block boundary,
Install HP PolyServe Matrix Server18