Essentially just want to confirm my current thoughts – have a 3-node 2012R2 Cluster. We are replacing two of the hosts. At the point when you add a new host to the cluster and run the validation, the storage tests are what take the VMs offline.
However, if I were to create an additional LUN, and add as an avaliable disk to the cluster (this LUN will contain no resources), and then only select this for the storage validation, I can avoid the downtime entirely?
Best Answer
Yes, that is a reasonable way to still kind of test the storage without taking the cluster offline.
You could also skip the storage tests entirely if you wanted to. That is not uncommon for adding more hosts to a live cluster.
Of course if you have issues and need support, Microsoft will want you to run the full validation including testing all the storage.