[2012R2]Storage Spaces - Am I doing it the right way?

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Strohhut Snuffy

New Member
Apr 7, 2017
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Germany - Berlin
Hello all,

i am looking for some advice and hoping some guys can help me / hint me in the right direction.

I got these parts:

  • 4x WD Red 4TB (WD40EFRX)
  • 4x SanDisk Plus 240GB (SDSSDA-240)
  • Dell Perc H200 (flashed to IT-mode, FW 21)

Running in a HP ML10 v2 including:

Intel Xeon 1230v3
4x 8GB DDR3
2012 R2 Datacenter - Hyper-V enabled

I'm passing through the disks into a VM (8 Cores, 4GB RAM, sep. 64GB VHDx for OS, 2012R2) and configured a storage space:

Get-PhysicalDisk -CanPool $True | ft FriendlyName,OperationalStatus,Size,MediaType
$pd = (Get-PhysicalDisk -CanPool $True | Where MediaType -NE UnSpecified)

New-StoragePool -PhysicalDisks $pd –StorageSubSystemFriendlyName “Storage Spaces*” -FriendlyName “Pool” -LogicalSectorSizeDefault 4096

Get-StoragePool -FriendlyName "Pool" | Get-PhysicalDisk | Select FriendlyName, MediaType

#Set 2 SSDs as Journal
Set-PhysicalDisk –Usage Journal –FriendlyName PhysicalDisk8
Set-PhysicalDisk –Usage Journal –FriendlyName PhysicalDisk9

#Create two tiers in the Storage Pool created. One for SSD disks and one for HDD disks
$ssd_Tier = New-StorageTier -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Pool" -FriendlyName SSD_Tier -MediaType SSD
$hdd_Tier = New-StorageTier -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Pool" -FriendlyName HDD_Tier -MediaType HDD

$vd1 = New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Pool" -FriendlyName SRV_DB -StorageTiers @($ssd_tier, $hdd_tier) -StorageTierSizes @(230GB, 7450GB) -ResiliencySettingName Mirror -WriteCacheSize 100GB

Am i doing some major mistakes to this point?
I tried to match my config with this guide:
and added a few details (4K sector size, journaling and wbc).

I also tried to configure my Storage Space with parity instead of mirror but the performance has been... well.. there was nothing that could be called performance :/


My major goal is to create an affordable and fairly fast storage. As Im running out of space soon in mirrored mode i'd prefer to switch to parity AND still retain the neccessary speed to satisfy 1GBit/s networks properly (2-4 users) There is NO NEED to backup the data which is stored on it but i'd like to have a small level of failure safety.

Thanks so far and greetings from germany.

P.S.:
As some maybe noticed i'm not a native speaking. If i seem impolite sometimes... that's definitely NOT my intention. Please forgive ;)
 

cesmith9999

Well-Known Member
Mar 26, 2013
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do not do it this way.

create the storage pool on the physical hardware and then create VM's with VHDX

Chris
 

Strohhut Snuffy

New Member
Apr 7, 2017
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Germany - Berlin
I did it that way before and thought ssd tiering / pinning won't do its job properly.
Nevertheless i got some fluctuating speeds - few minutes nearly 200-230MB/s (sometimes peaked at 400MB/s) and than for 10-30s 0MBit/s whily my hdds raged in their cage...

With the present configuration the speed is stable at 120-130MB/s even over 2-5h. So i thought this solution would be the better way?

I understood SSD Tiering that way:
It's a job running on the machine which "hosts" the storage pool and pins the files contained inside the "virtual disk" (not vhdx) into the SSD tier.

Obviously i am wrong?`

Niklas
 
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Strohhut Snuffy

New Member
Apr 7, 2017
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Hello,

unfortunately - due to my tight budget - yes. I've seen that articel in the past... but affording an enterprise ssd is not possible - yet.
Nevertheless - the kind of information i'm looking for is more the way how i need to configure my storage space properly.
 

Strohhut Snuffy

New Member
Apr 7, 2017
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Germany - Berlin
Hi,

as the ML10v2 is not capable to handle hyper-v if Server 2016 is installed (better said 2016 + vt-d + hyper-v role activated - it wont boot). So i would prefer to stay at 2012R2.

P.S.:

At the moment i'm vhdxing (disk2vhd) my Storage Space onto a 8TB WD Red (purchased for these purposes - testing, migrating, etc.). I'm even considering to give freenas a try ... "desperate" as i am..
The other option i consider to try out:
Debian, zfs configured pool, proxmox. I heard a lot positive about it... but i rly... dislike linux administration and would prefer to stay at WS and Storage Space... so... any other suggestions / hints / tips i'm obviously missing?
 
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pricklypunter

Well-Known Member
Nov 10, 2015
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Canada
Hi,

as the ML10v2 is not capable to handle hyper-v if Server 2016 is installed (better said 2016 + vt-d + hyper-v role activated - it wont boot). So i would prefer to stay at 2012R2.
I am probably misinformed, but I thought that was only the case with machines that were supplied with CPU's & Bioses that didn't support vt-d?
 

Strohhut Snuffy

New Member
Apr 7, 2017
6
0
1
36
Germany - Berlin
Good evening Sir's and Ma'ams,

I digged through the often mentioned PigLovers 2012R2 Storage Spaces Thread and adapted a few settings:

Get-PhysicalDisk -CanPool $True | ft FriendlyName,OperationalStatus,Size,MediaType
$pd = (Get-PhysicalDisk -CanPool $True | Where MediaType -NE UnSpecified)
New-StoragePool -PhysicalDisks $pd –StorageSubSystemFriendlyName “Storage Spaces*” -FriendlyName “Pool” -LogicalSectorSizeDefault 4096
Get-StoragePool -FriendlyName "Pool" | Get-PhysicalDisk | Select FriendlyName, MediaType
Get-StoragePool -FriendlyName Pool | Get-PhysicalDisk | ? MediaType -eq SSD | Set-PhysicalDisk –Usage Journal
New-StorageTier -StoragePoolFriendlyName Pool -FriendlyName SSD_Tier -MediaType SSD
New-StorageTier -StoragePoolFriendlyName Pool -FriendlyName HDD_Tier -MediaType HDD
New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName Pool -FriendlyName HDD_Parity -UseMaximumSize -ResiliencySettingName Parity -ProvisioningType Fixed -NumberOfColumns 4 -WriteCacheSize 100GB

Result - I got some "acceptable" reading results (500-550MB/s) for a parity configuration. But... what totally collapsed -> The write results decreased to ~50MB/s. This differs a lot to his results and I can not figure out where my mistake is...


/E:

Well.. and giving it several tries with just simple file copies.. (Read from 8TB WD Red) is... somewhere between slow 1MB/s up to 130-140MB/s... unsteady and mostly around 30MB/s - this is... meh.
 
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