Solved: I cannot manage (bring online, initialize, partition, format, or write to) a VHDX hard drive once it has "Enable Virtual Hard Disk Sharing" enabled.

Question

Hello,
Issue:
On a Virtual Machine with a secondary VHDX attached, I cannot manage (bring online, initialize, partition, format, or write to) the VHDX hard drive once it has "Enable Virtual Hard Disk Sharing (VHD Sharing)" enabled.
Questions:
Should I be able to manage (bring online, initialize, partition, format, and write to) a VHDX hard drive once it has VHD Sharing enabled? If I should be able to manage it, what am I missing?
Topography:
One SuperMicro Cluster In a Box (CIB) with 2012 R2 Data Center on each node. Microsoft Failover Cluster installed and working on each node. The Failover Cluster Servers on each host passes all cluster validation tests. Two Hyper-V 2012 R2 Data Center Virtual
Machine (VM) servers, one on each node. 1 common Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) and 1 Generation 2 Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) shared volume both Resilient File System (REFS) formatted. One 5 Gigabit (Gb) Virtual Hard Drive Type X (VHDX) file on the CSV and/or
SOFS. Integrity bit and read only turned off on VHDX file.
Each of the two Hyper-V VMs have one 127Gb VHDX Generation 2 primary hard drive and 1 VHDX secondary hard drive attached, both on SCSI Controller #1.
Background:
If I start VM1 without the VHD Sharing enabled on the secondary hard drive, I can bring the drive online, initialize, partition, format, and write to the drive.
If I enable VHD Sharing, I can no longer modify the drive in Disk Management in any way. With or without VM2 running.
Both VMs and the CSV and SOFS are on the same host cluster server, or not, no difference…
The VHDX is referenced either by the CSV name C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\TEST1.VHDX
 or a Shared Folder name
\\sharedfolder\folder\Test1.VHDX .
If I start VM1 with VHD Sharing disabled and I format the drive, then shut down and enable VHD Sharing, the drive is offline and requests initialization which fails with an "I/O device error", every other attempt to manage the drive fails with
the same "I/O device error", error.
Events:
VDS fails to write boot code on a disk during clean operation. Error code: 8007045D@02070008
Log Name:      System
Source:        Virtual Disk Service
Date:          3/3/2015 11:39:18 AM
Event ID:      10
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      Server1.Domain.local
Description:
VDS fails to write boot code on a disk during clean operation. Error code: 8007045D@02070008
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="Virtual Disk Service" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="49664">10</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-03-03T19:39:18.000000000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>27318</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>System</Channel>
    <Computer> Server1.Domain.local </Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>8007045D@02070008</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>
AND
Log Name:      System
Source:        disk
Date:          3/3/2015 12:16:42 PM
Event ID:      153
Task Category: None
Level:         Warning
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      Server1.Domain.local
Description:
The IO operation at logical block address 0x0 for Disk 1 (PDO name: \Device\MPIODisk1) was retried.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="disk" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="32772">153</EventID>
    <Level>3</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-03-03T20:16:42.017090000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>27333</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>System</Channel>
    <Computer>Server1.Domain.local</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>\Device\Harddisk1\DR1</Data>
    <Data>0x0</Data>
    <Data>1</Data>
    <Data>\Device\MPIODisk1</Data>
    <Binary>0F01040004002C00000000009900048000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000020488</Binary>
  </EventData>
</Event>
Thanks again for any help,
Robert

Answer 1

Hi All,
I had to buy a Willy Wonka bar and spend a golden ticket to get an answer to this one.
We found that the default LogicalSectorSizeBytes of a VHDX is 512b. It needs to be 4kb.
The Host drive doesn't seem to matter CSV or SOFS. Below is a way to create a VHDX with the correct LogicalSectorSizeBytes.
In Power Shell, type --> New-VHD -Path C:\ClusterStorage\Volume4\Cluster2DataDisks\Cluster2Disk1.vhdx -SizeBytes 200Gb -PhysicalSectorSizeBytes 4kb -LogicalSectorSizeBytes 4kb
Attach the resulting file to your guest cluster servers and set the Enable Virtual Hard Disk Sharing option on both server. You should now be able to bring the drives on-line and initialize them. They will also add to the guest cluster pool.
Change the size, path and file name above to fit your Cluster Servers configuration.
Thank You 
Sachin Kumar Support Engineer | Windows Server Setup Team | Microsoft Enterprise Platform for finding the answer to this one.
Hope this helps others.
Robert