How to Add More Storage to an Existing Azure Stack HCI Cluster – Step-by-Step Guide

If you’re looking to add additional storage to your existing Azure Stack HCI on-premises cluster, you’re in the right place. Whether you’re expanding capacity for virtual workloads, backups, or new applications, Azure Stack HCI makes scaling storage both flexible and efficient.

Below is a detailed guide with helpful documentation to walk you through the process:

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🔧 Step 1: Prepare and Install New Drives

Before anything else, make sure the drives you plan to use meet the Azure Stack HCI hardware requirements. This ensures compatibility and long-term performance.

📎 Check Azure Stack HCI Hardware Requirements

Once confirmed, physically install the new drives into each server in your cluster.

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💽 Step 2: Initialize and Format Drives

After installation, initialize and format the drives using diskpart or your preferred disk management tool. This prepares them for use by Windows and Azure Stack HCI.

📎 How to Use DiskPart

⚠️ Make sure not to format any existing drives in use by your cluster!

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📦 Step 3: Add New Drives to Your Storage Pool

Now that your drives are online and formatted, it’s time to add them to your existing Storage Pool. This is the foundation that Azure Stack HCI uses to create fault-tolerant, high-performance volumes.

You can do this via:

• Windows Admin Center
• PowerShell
• Or the Failover Cluster Manager

📎 Storage Pools Overview

📎 Windows Admin Center Overview

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♻️ Step 4: Rebalance the Storage Pool

To ensure your data is evenly distributed across all drives (new and old), you should rebalance the storage pool. This enhances performance and increases lifespan.

📎 How to Rebalance a Storage Space

This can also be done using PowerShell or through the Admin Center.

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📈 Step 5: Expand Your Virtual Disks (Optional)

Once your storage pool is expanded and rebalanced, you can optionally expand your existing virtual disks to utilize the new space.

📎 Manage Virtual Disks in Storage Spaces

Make sure to confirm available space using Get-VirtualDisk and Resize-VirtualDisk cmdlets.

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❗ Note:

Some documentation links might show a 404 error if the URL path changes over time. If this happens, simply search for the last two parts of the URL in Microsoft Learn to find the correct article.

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✅ Wrapping Up

I hope this detailed guide helps you expand your Azure Stack HCI storage confidently and smoothly. If you run into any issues, feel free to reach back out here.

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If this response helped you, please consider upvoting and marking it as the accepted answer so that other members of the community facing similar questions can benefit from it too.

Best regards,
– Pablo Villaronga
Microsoft Certified | Azure Specialist