Home > Workload Solutions > SQL Server > White Papers > Deploying Dell EMC SRDF/Metro Smart DR with Microsoft SQL Server for Physical and Virtual Environments > Step 1: Format the disk resources on a node and add them to cluster
Any cluster node can be used to format the disks presented to it by SRDF/Metro. On Windows Server 2019, an allocation unit size of 128K and higher is available when formatting a device. It is recommended to format the disks with at least the 128KB allocation unit. This provides better performance and predictable behavior when using Windows offloaded data transfer (ODX) and PowerMax Deduplication, because the 128K allocation unit size aligns with the 128K track size used on the PowerMax device. Once disks are formatted, they will be available in Windows failover cluster manager to be added as cluster available storage.
Use Computer Management (1) > Disk Management to scan and the PowerMax devices visible to the host. Use Failover Cluster Manager (2) > Storage > Disks (3) and click the Add Disk (4) action to add those disks to failover cluster, as shown in the figure below:
Figure 26. Formatted disks on a cluster node