Manage volumes in Azure Stack HCI and Windows Server

Article
07/10/2024

Applies to: Azure Stack HCI, versions 22H2 and 21H2; Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016

This article describes how to expand, move, or delete volumes in Azure Stack HCI and Windows Server by using either Windows Admin Center or PowerShell.

Prerequisites

Before you begin to manage volumes, make sure that:

You have administrator privileges to access the cluster.
You have access to a management computer that is in the same domain as your cluster.

Here are a few other prerequisites for moving volumes:

Make sure the volume is in a healthy state before you move it. To find out about the health state of a volume, see Monitor volumes for Windows Admin Center and Virtual disk state for PowerShell.
If using PowerShell to move volumes, make sure you have the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) cmdlets and PowerShell modules for Hyper-V and Failover Clustering. If these aren't already available in your PowerShell session on your management computer, add them using the following command: Add-WindowsFeature RSAT-Clustering-PowerShell.

Expand volumes

This section describes how to expand volumes using Windows Admin Center or PowerShell.

Warning

Not supported: resizing the underlying storage used by Storage Spaces Direct. If you are running Storage Spaces Direct in a virtualized storage environment, including in Azure, resizing or changing the characteristics of the storage devices used by the virtual machines isn't supported and will cause data to become inaccessible. Instead, follow the instructions in the Add servers or drives section to add additional capacity before expanding volumes.

Windows Admin Center
PowerShell

Follow these steps to expand volumes in Windows Admin Center:

In Windows Admin Center, connect to a cluster, and then select Volumes from the Tools pane.
On the Volumes page, select the Inventory tab, and then select the volume that you want to expand. On the volume detail page, the storage capacity for the volume is indicated.

You can also open the volumes detail page directly from Dashboard. On the Dashboard, in the Alerts section, select the alert, which notifies you if a volume is running low on storage capacity, and then select Go To Volume.
At the top of the volumes detail page, select Settings.
Enter a new larger size in the right pane, and then select Save.

On the volumes detail page, the larger storage capacity for the volume is indicated, and the alert on the Dashboard is cleared.

Capacity in the storage pool

Before you expand a volume, make sure you have enough capacity in the storage pool to accommodate its new, larger footprint. For example, when expanding a three-way mirror volume from 1 TB to 2 TB, its footprint would grow from 3 TB to 6 TB. For the expansion to succeed, you would need at least (6 - 3) = 3 TB of available capacity in the storage pool.

Familiarity with volumes in Storage Spaces

In Storage Spaces Direct, every volume is composed of several stacked objects: the cluster shared volume (CSV), which is a volume; the partition; the disk, which is a virtual disk; and one or more storage tiers (if applicable). To resize a volume, you need to resize several of these objects.

To familiarize yourself with them, try running the Get- cmdlet with the corresponding noun in PowerShell.

For example:

Get-VirtualDisk

To follow associations between objects in the stack, pipe one Get- cmdlet into the next.

For example, here's how to get from a virtual disk up to its associated volume:

Get-VirtualDisk <FriendlyName> | Get-Disk | Get-Partition | Get-Volume

Step 1 – Expand the virtual disk

The virtual disk may use storage tiers, or not, depending on how it was created.

To check, run the following cmdlet:

Get-VirtualDisk <FriendlyName> | Get-StorageTier

If the cmdlet returns nothing, the virtual disk doesn't use storage tiers.

No storage tiers

If the virtual disk has no storage tiers, you can expand it directly using the Resize-VirtualDisk cmdlet.

Provide the new size in the -Size parameter.

Get-VirtualDisk <FriendlyName> | Resize-VirtualDisk -Size <Size>

When you expand the VirtualDisk, the associated Disk follows automatically and is resized too.

Animated diagram shows the virtual disk of a volume becoming larger while the disk layer immediately above it automatically becomes larger as a result.

With storage tiers

If the virtual disk uses storage tiers, you can expand each tier separately using the Resize-StorageTier cmdlet.

Get the names of the storage tiers by following the associations from the virtual disk:

Get-VirtualDisk <FriendlyName> | Get-StorageTier | Select FriendlyName

Then, for each tier, provide the new size in the -Size parameter:

Get-StorageTier <FriendlyName> | Resize-StorageTier -Size <Size>

Tip

If your tiers are different physical media types (such as MediaType = SSD and MediaType = HDD) you need to ensure you have enough capacity of each media type in the storage pool to accommodate the new, larger footprint of each tier.

When you expand the StorageTier(s), the associated VirtualDisk and Disk follow automatically and are resized too.

Animated diagram shows first one then another storage tier becoming large while the virtual disk layer and disk layer above become larger as well.

Step 2 – Expand the partition

Next, expand the partition using the Resize-Partition cmdlet. The virtual disk is expected to have two partitions: the first is Reserved and shouldn't be modified; the one you need to resize has PartitionNumber = 2 and Type = Basic.

Provide the new size in the -Size parameter. We recommend using the maximum supported size, as follows:

# Choose virtual disk
$VirtualDisk = Get-VirtualDisk <FriendlyName>

# Get its partition
$Partition = $VirtualDisk | Get-Disk | Get-Partition | Where PartitionNumber -Eq 2

# Resize to its maximum supported size
$Partition | Resize-Partition -Size ($Partition | Get-PartitionSupportedSize).SizeMax

When you expand the Partition, the associated Volume and ClusterSharedVolume follow automatically and are resized too.

Animated diagram shows the virtual disk layer, at the bottom of the volume, growing larger with each of the layers above it growing larger as well.

That's it!

Tip

You can verify the volume has the new size by running the Get-Volume cmdlet.

Move volumes

This section describes how to move Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) from one cluster node to another by using Windows Admin Center or PowerShell.

You may require to move volumes in several scenarios, including:

To balance out the storage capacity among different nodes in the cluster.
To troubleshoot an issue on an unhealthy cluster node.
To conform to system configuration rules, such as to have certain volumes on a specific cluster node.

Note

For stretched clusters, you can move a volume only to another server in the same site.

Windows Admin Center
PowerShell

Follow these steps to move volumes using Windows Admin Center:

In Windows Admin Center, connect to a cluster, and then select Volumes from the Tools pane on the left.
On the Volumes page, select the Inventory tab, and then select the volume that you want to move.
At the top of the Volumes page, select Move.
In the right pane, select the Destination server where you want to move the volume to and then select Move.

You can either run PowerShell locally using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) on a host server, or you can run PowerShell remotely from a management computer.

Follow these steps to move volumes using PowerShell:

Launch PowerShell as Administrator on your management computer.
To remotely connect to the cluster, run the following command:
```
Enter-PSSession -ComputerName <ClusterName>
```
where:
- ClusterName is the name of your cluster.

To list all the CSVs in your cluster, run the following cmdlet:

Get-ClusterSharedVolume

Here's an example output that lists all the CSVs in the hcicluster.contoso.corp.com cluster:

[hcicluster.contoso.corp.com]: PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-ClusterSharedVolume

Name                           State  Node
----                           -----  ----
Cluster Virtual Disk (test)    Online azuredoc-srv2
Cluster Virtual Disk (VMs1)    Online azuredoc-srv1
Cluster Virtual Disk (VMs2)    Online azuredoc-srv1
Cluster Virtual Disk (Volume1) Online azuredoc-srv2

To move a CSV from one node to another in your cluster, run the following cmdlet:
```
Move-ClusterSharedVolume -Name "<CSV-Name>" -Node <NodeName>
```
where:
- CSV-Name is the name of the CSV that you want to move. Make sure to type the entire string of the CSV name, and not just the FriendlyName. For example, Cluster Virtual Disk (Volume1).
- NodeName is the name of the cluster node where you want to move the CSV to.
Here's an example output that moves Cluster Virtual Disk (Volume1) to the azuredoc-srv1 node:
```
   [hcicluster.contoso.corp.com]: PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Move-ClusterSharedVolume -Name "Cluster Virtual Disk (Volume1)" -Node azuredoc-srv1

   Name                           State  Node
   ----                           -----  ----
   Cluster Virtual Disk (Volume1) Online azuredoc-srv1
```

Delete volumes

This section describes how to delete volumes by using Windows Admin Center or PowerShell.

Before you delete a volume, consider the following requirements:

Ensure the volume you're deleting isn't actively used by Arc Kubernetes clusters or VMs to prevent data loss or system issues.
Remove the associated workload and then delete the storage paths. For more information, see Delete a storage path.

Windows Admin Center
PowerShell

In Windows Admin Center, connect to a cluster, and then select Volumes from the Tools pane on the left.
On the Volumes page, select the Inventory tab, and then select the volume that you want to delete.
At the top of the volumes detail page, select Delete.
In the confirmations dialog, confirm that you want to delete the volume, and select Delete.

Use the Remove-VirtualDisk cmdlet to delete the VirtualDisk object and return the space it used to the storage pool that exposes the VirtualDisk object.

First, launch PowerShell on your management PC and run the Get-VirtualDisk cmdlet with the CimSession parameter, which is the name of a cluster or server node, for example clustername.contoso.com:

Get-VirtualDisk -CimSession clustername.contoso.com

This returns a list of possible values for the -FriendlyName parameter, which correspond to volume names on your cluster.

Example

To delete a mirrored volume called Volume1, run the following command in PowerShell:

Remove-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName "Volume1"

You're asked to confirm that you want to perform the action and erase all the data that the volume contains. Choose Y or N.