Storage Pool Windows Server 2016
Storage Spaces has been around for many years in one form or another. The primitives for it started with Windows Home Server, which was built on SBS 2003. Since then, it has morphed many times into many different iterations. In 2012 R2, storage spaces exist as a way of aggregating multiple disks together into pools, and then allowing for volumes to be created from that pool and served out.
This works great but what happens if you need that to be highly available? High Availability with Storage SpacesTo create highly available storage spaces with 2012 R2, disks internal to the server can no longer be used; they have to be external and connected via a shared medium (such as SAS) to multiple servers. These disks can’t be RAIDed though; they must be independent disks (JBOD). Those independent disks are then put into pools that are used to create a failover cluster for the storage space. If one node fails, the other node takes over the resources and brings everything up for clients.
How to configure a Multi-Resilient Volume on Windows Server 2016 using Storage Spaces - October 24, 2017.
Windows Server 2016 Expand Storage Pool
This is a very good feature, but it requires the nodes to share storage. That means wonderful technologies like NVMe drives are not compatible, because they require a PCI-E slot, which can’t be shared between nodes. This is where Storage Spaces Direct comes in. Storage Spaces DirectStorage Spaces Direct with Windows Server 2016 allows for each server to have its own internal storage, but build a pool across multiple servers.
Rather than the disks having to be accessible to multiple nodes, the pool is built with each node having sole control of its own disks, yet sharing with all the other nodes. This allows for a much more flexible implementation strategy in which almost any disks can be used in multiple nodes to supply the capacity needed.Storage Spaces Direct is targeted specifically at Hyper-V. There are two ways to deploy it with Hyper-V, hyper-converged and disaggregated. If deployed as hyper-converged, the servers that contain the storage are also the Hyper-V servers. A volume is created from the pool and then served up and a CSV is created on it to make the VMs. This makes it a direct competitor to VMware VSAN.Disaggregated, on the other hand, allows you to create one Storage Spaces Direct cluster for just storage and then have that serve storage (SMB3) to a separate cluster for the actual compute (Hyper-V).In addition to the Storage Spaces Direct deployment model, all the previous methods of deploying Storage Spaces and Scale Out File Server still exist.
This flexibility gives several deployment options to give the most optimal configuration for your environment, and allows Microsoft to effectively tick almost every deployment method that is being discussed by competitors.While most organizations already opt for the Datacenter edition of Windows Server, it is worth noting that it is the only edition that comes with Storage Spaces Direct. If this feature is compelling enough for you, make sure you buy the Datacenter edition.Want to read up more on what’s new with Windows Server 2016? Check out our other blog posts:.You can also watch my. If you have questions about Windows Server, you can or give us a call at 502-240-0404!
I have a single Windows Server 2016 Standard Server, with 3x 4 TB drives, on plain SATA Controllers (2x On-Board Intel, 1x Add-On PCI Express Asmedia 1061). The server itself is virtualized, running on a Windows Server 2016 Standard in Hyper-V, with the disks being physically attached to the VM in Hyper-V.I could create a regular RAID-5 Volume in Computer Management, which has been supported for several Windows Server versions (Back to Server 2000 or at least Server 2003?)However, the big new Storage Feature since Server 2012 has been Storage Spaces, which.However, I haven't been able to find much information about why I would use Storage Spaces Parity over a regular RAID-5 Volume in a 3-disk/single parity setup. @Chopper3 Can you elaborate?
I understand that with bigger disks, the risk of having up-to-date backups decreases, but in the balance between cost and needing the extra space, RAID-5 seems like it adds the reduncancy of 'One drive can just die'. In understand that RAID is an availability mechanism since no RAID is going to protect against Ransomware or data deletion. So just wondering: Is there something inherently wrong with R5, or is it just the reality of 'More than 1 disk WILL fail, eventually'?–Jul 22 '17 at 18:29.
It's a bad idea to use parity Storage Spaces because:1) Single parity is dangerous: every time one disk dies and you start a rebuild process there's a heavy load applied to all remaining spindles, so there are great chances you'll get second, now deadly fault.2) Performance is horrible. ZFS has proper journaling and variable sized parity strips, while Storage Spaces have none.Use RAID10 equivalent or a single node Storage Spaces Direct + ReFS and a multi-resilient disks.(that's for performance to build a proper RAID10 equivalent)(that's for multi-resilient disk, one will give you flash-in-mirror + disks-in-parity). Unless you're doing a HEAVILY read-oriented system, Storage Spaces Parity mode is less than optimal. I'd strongly suggest using the Mirror mode. Do note that Mirror in Storage Spaces is NOT RAID1. It functions like RAID1E (mostly).
It will divide your disks into chunks, then ensure all data exists on 2 disks (for 4 disks or fewer), or 3 disks (for 5 disks or greater). When combined with ReFS, with the integrity streams enabled and enforced, it will also checksum your data like ZFS does.Also, I think you're confusing Storage Spaces with Storage Spaces Direct.Windows Server 2016 Standard has Storage Spaces, but not Storage Spaces Direct. You do NOT need anything offered with the 'Direct' as you're not doing clustered storage. There's a reason it's only offered in the DC version: it's not useful outside of a clustered scenario.You can absolutely open up Server Manager and create a 3 disk 'Mirror' pool, which will function like RAID1E (mostly), and give you 6TB available, rather than 8TB as you would get with Parity mode, but you get much better write performance, and better resiliency. You can add a 4th disk later and rebalance the pool to being more like RAID10 (2 columns, 2 stripes).The RAID5 stuff in Disk Management is garbage, do not use it.
RAID 5 in the 'Dynamic Disks' section in Disk Management in Windows has a number of serious flaws. First is performance. Secondly is implementation: the primary disk (the OS volume, ie C:) contains all of the information about the dynamic volume. If the primary disk fails, you also lose the RAID 5 volume. Effectively this makes it RAID05, since you're at risk for losing everything if you lose just a single disk. There's more reasons than just those two to stay away from Dynamic Disks in Windows, but those should be enough.–Feb 15 '18 at 15:45.
Ok thanks, last year I bought 4 hdd's for raid-5 in storage spaces, after installation I wanted to test what would happen if one drive failed so i pulled out 1 of the sata cables. I got a error message all well and good, but when i tried to remount the drive, it wasn't picked up automaticly and i could not remove the failed drive from storage spaces. A fresh windows install was the only thing that worked. After a new raid-5 my computer froze while coping data and the only way i could get the drives to work was with a raid-5 in disk management. Also last week i did a fresh install no problems.–Feb 17 '18 at 9:29.
1) There is nothing inherently wrong with hardware RAID. RAID 5 has gotten a bad rap lately because disk sizes are increasing rapidly which is making for very large arrays and increasing the mathematical likelihood of unrecoverable array failure.2) 'Software RAID' like Storage Spaces comes in a lot of flavors and configurations.
Some are bad, and some are quite good. This is ultimately a mixture of hardware and software that needs to be properly configured.Why use 'Storage Spaces' or ZFS vs a RAID controller:If you make a very large RAID array (we'll say something like 4x4tb RAID 5) your likelihood of a puncture (this simply a bad bit on an otherwise functional disk) is quite high. If you're using only a hardware RAID controller, the controller has no idea what you are or are going to install on the disks (nor does it care).
It's simply using an algorithm to bond those disks into one big 'physical' disk to your operating system.