Windows 2012 R2 - Storage Spaces - Expanding existing Pool

[humbleThC]

So I have a Windows 2012 R2 server acting as my NAS for CIFS/NFS/iSCSI at the moment.

I originally created the pool with: - (5) Hitachi NAS drives 7.2K - 4TB
- (2) Samsung Evo 850 - 250GB [both dedicated journals]

Now I have a 2nd set of the 7 drives above, and i want to grow the existing pool by 200% (capacity & journals).

I'm pretty sure growing the capacity is going to be straight forward, but I have questions on growing the journals. Specifically, will my existing vDisk use the new journal space?

Right now its a single 14.5TB vDisk (with an existing stripe size of 5), on a 14.5TB Pool, i plan to grow the pool and the volume both to 29TB, and hopefully double the Journal speed/capacity as well.

But if I have to destroy the pool and re-create it for performance/functionality, i'd best figure that out before I grow it I could create a 2nd pool, with it's own dedicated journals, and separate vDisk. But... I was hoping to double my current 1GB/s sustained read/write as well as the capacity. (using dual 40Gb Infiniband on all my hosts, so there is a reason to keep it all as one if possible)

I technically could use this opportunity to rebuild to Windows 2016 as well, if storage services is "that much better" making it worth while I suppose. (i.e. future growths wont require backup/rebuild/restores, etc)

Any advice is appreciated as always, thanks!

 

[humbleThC]

Wow surprised my GoogleFoo couldn't really determine one way or another on best practices for growing pools, and "does it work". Even more surprised 150 views here, and no one really has any thoughts on "does it work?" can you grow a pool, what are the cause/effects etc.

 

[cesmith9999]

Specifically, will my existing vDisk use the new journal space?

it will not.

You need to add the 7 new disks to the existing storage pool. Then create a new vdisk and copy the data to the new vdisk to use the new journal disk (make sure to add more WBC space).

Adding disks to the pool will just get more space. and it will balance depending on if your vdisk is thin or fixed.

upgrading to 2016 allows for a new cmdlet called optimize-storage. that would level your space utilization across the disks in your storage pool.



Chris

 

[humbleThC]

Thanks Chris~

my existing vDisk is Fixed. So if I expanded the existing pool with the 7 disks, created a new vDisk, migrated everything over, and then delete the existing vdisk, I could expand the new vdisk and utilize all 10 disks in a balanced fashion?

I've been reviewing the option to upgrade to Windows 2016, but for a non-clustered storage spaces implementation i'm not seeing a whole lot of improvements to storage spaces in 2016. i.e. I cant find the min/max's for things like WBC (I know in 2012 it capped @ 100GB, is that still true for 2016?).

My concern is I already have a pair of 250GB SSDs as dedicated journals, and i'm afraid i'm limited to 100GB/250 today. And after expansion, i'd end up limited to 100GB/500GB.

My only real option, i believe, is to purchase 3x more 250GB SSDs, and add a 5-pack as a flash tier in the pool itself. (because my existing stripe width is 5)

(That or convert to ZFS which is where i wanted to start a year ago when I built this box, but the lack for Mellanox ConnectX-2 CNA drivers that support 40Gb IBoIP with RDMA became my ultimate bottleneck, which is why I landed on Windows 2012 R2.

 

[cesmith9999]

I cant find the min/max's for things like WBC (I know in 2012 it capped @ 100GB, is that still true for 2016?).

I do not know if that specific limitation changed in 2016.

there were 2 major improvements in 2016 standalone
1) different interleave sizes in the different tiers i.e. in your case you could have a tiered parity space. with a 5 * 1 (SSD) + a (5 * 2) in HDD. like you mentioned.
2) optimize-storage allows you to add storage to the pool and re-level your storage.

The rest of the major improvements were in S2D.

Chris

 

[humbleThC]

I do not know if that specific limitation changed in 2016.

there were 2 major improvements in 2016 standalone
1) different interleave sizes in the different tiers i.e. in your case you could have a tiered parity space. with a 5 * 1 (SSD) + a (5 * 2) in HDD. like you mentioned.
2) optimize-storage allows you to add storage to the pool and re-level your storage.

The rest of the major improvements were in S2D.

Chris

Thanks much!