Failover Cluster add disk fails on Windows

When trying to add a new cluster disk in a Failover Cluster the following error comes up in the report.

No Disks suitable for cluster disks were found. For diagnostic information about disks available to the cluster, use the Validate a configuration Wizard to run storage tests.

From my experience I have only been able to add a cluster disk using the following process.

  1. Identify the active node in the cluster

  2. Log into that node and from there Online, initialize and format the disk

  3. From the active node add the disk to the cluster

If you try and add or format from a node that is not the active node you will get these errors in the report in this case I am trying to add PhysicalDrive16

List Potential Cluster Disks

List disks visible to all nodes that will be validated for cluster compatibility. Online clustered disks will be excluded.

No disks were found on which to perform cluster validation tests. To correct this, review the following possible causes:

  • The disks are already clustered and currently Online in the cluster. When testing a working cluster, ensure that the disks that you want to test are Offline in the cluster.

  • The disks are unsuitable for clustering. Boot volumes, system volumes, disks used for paging or dump files, and disks that do not use NTFS are examples of disks unsuitable for clustering.

  • The disks are not visible to all nodes (even though they are in shared storage). Review the “List All Disks” test to see which disks are visible to all nodes. Ensure that the disks you want to test are unmasked, that is, your masking or zoning does not prevent access to the disks. If the disks seem to be unmasked or zoned correctly but could not be tested, try restarting the servers before running the validation tests again.

  • The cluster does not use shared storage. A cluster must use a hardware solution based either on shared storage or on replication between nodes. If your solution is based on replication between nodes, you do not need to rerun Storage tests. Instead, work with the provider of your replication solution to ensure that replicated copies of the cluster configuration database can be maintained across the nodes:

    No disks were found on which to perform
cluster validation tests.

After performing the procedure above the report looks like this and everything works.

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