WS16: Tiered Parity Storage Pools how?

[DieHarke]

I already asked that question in a different thread, but maybe it's better to create an own thread for my problem.

My goal is to create a tiered storage pool with a resilience level set to single parity (both for ssd and hdd tier). Therefore I already own three 250gb ssds. The problem is that I couln'd find out the correct powershell commands to create such a storage pool. I have tested it with three old 512gb hdds.

So the testpool looked like this:

FriendlyName SerialNumber MediaType
------------
ATA Samsung SSD 850 S2R6NB0HC27909Z SSD
ATA SAMSUNG HD502HJ S20BJ90B690862 HDD
ATA Samsung SSD 850 S21PNSAG776420V SSD
ATA Samsung SSD 850 S21PNSAG203881E SSD
ATA SAMSUNG HD501LJ S0UQJ1DP901935 HDD
ATA SAMSUNG HD502HJ S20BJ90B690863 HDD

With that storage pool I'm also not able to select praity resiliency even, when using the gui. It would be nice if someone could help figure out the powershell commands. Or if tiered parity storage pools are not supported is there another way to incorporate the three ssds in a good way?

 

[brinox]

I tested out a tiered storage spaces array with single parity in Server 2012 R2 a few weeks back. What's the command(s) you're working with so far?

Edit: this website may give you some assistance in creating what I think you're looking for. Also, if you're wanting a custom sized Write Back Cache, do note that it must be smaller than *half* the available SSD space. Use the above Powershell commands and add -WriteCacheSize ###GB switch to configure that.

 

[DieHarke]

Okay I create another testpool, which is the following:

FriendlyName      MediaType        UniqueId                     Size
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATA Samsung SSD 850  SSD  5002538D419297C1                  249913409536
ATA Samsung SSD 850  SSD  5002538DA031F6B1                  249913409536
ATA Samsung SSD 850  SSD  5002538DA017C4D8                  249913409536
Msft Virtual Disk    HDD  60022480133D913F3C6B17B3A35A167C  107374182400
Msft Virtual Disk    HDD  60022480C6DE23EE81DBA865EC7635B4  107374182400
Msft Virtual Disk    HDD  60022480168FFB60CE2799878575BE74  107374182400
Msft Virtual Disk    HDD  60022480557AB628186FD1BFB4F4F910  107374182400

Basically the pool consists out ou 3 Samsung SSDs with 250GB space and 4 virtual disks with 100GB space each.


Then I created two storage tiers and the virtual disk creating the tiered parity space:

$ssd_Tier = New-StorageTier -StoragePoolFriendlyName StoragePool0 -FriendlyName SSD_Tier -MediaType SSD -ResiliencySettingName Parity -NumberOfColumns 3
$hdd_Tier = New-StorageTier -StoragePoolFriendlyName StoragePool0 -FriendlyName HDD_Tier -MediaType HDD -ResiliencySettingName Parity -NumberOfColumns 4

New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName StoragePool0 -FriendlyName TieredParitySpace -StorageTiers @($ssd_tier, $hdd_tier) -storagetiersizes 100GB, 200GB -ResiliencySettingName Parity -WriteCacheSize 25GB

Apparently the commands finished without errors and reporting that output:

FriendlyName  ResiliencySettingName  OperationalStatus  HealthStatus  IsManualAttach  Size
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TieredParitySpace                          OK             Healthy         False      300 GB

1. So now the question if this is correct and I could check if its on parity?
2. What would be normal way when I have to change a drive in cases of failure?
3. What would be the maximum sizes for a setup of SSD-Tier: 3x250GB and HDD-Tier: 6x8TB and a WriteBackCache of 50GB?

 

[DieHarke]

And additionally when I list all created storage tiers from the pool I get the following output:

PS C:\****\Desktop\> Get-StoragePool -FriendlyName StoragePool0 | Get-StorageTier

ObjectId               : {1}\\****\root/Microsoft/Windows/Storage/Providers_v2\SPACES_StorageTier.ObjectId="{1ebf8967-0aa2-11e7-b565-806e6f6e6963}:ST:{d198d6
                         9d-3fdd-4cc9-ac80-d1a86b5d79dc}{30234245-5cd5-4c1e-930c-29e71b39d809}"
PassThroughClass       :
PassThroughIds         :
PassThroughNamespace   :
PassThroughServer      :
UniqueId               : {30234245-5cd5-4c1e-930c-29e71b39d809}
AllocatedSize          : 0
AllocationUnitSize     : Auto
ColumnIsolation        : PhysicalDisk
Description            :
FaultDomainAwareness   : PhysicalDisk
FootprintOnPool        : 0
FriendlyName           : HDD_Tier
Interleave             : 262144
MediaType              : HDD
NumberOfColumns        : 4
NumberOfDataCopies     : 1
NumberOfGroups         : Auto
ParityLayout           : Rotated Parity
PhysicalDiskRedundancy : 1
ProvisioningType       : Fixed
ResiliencySettingName  : Parity
Size                   : 0
Usage                  : Data
PSComputerName         :

ObjectId               : {1}\\****\root/Microsoft/Windows/Storage/Providers_v2\SPACES_StorageTier.ObjectId="{1ebf8967-0aa2-11e7-b565-806e6f6e6963}:ST:{d198d6
                         9d-3fdd-4cc9-ac80-d1a86b5d79dc}{925ec220-eee1-4c6a-a614-9f3d1c3b3f7e}"
PassThroughClass       :
PassThroughIds         :
PassThroughNamespace   :
PassThroughServer      :
UniqueId               : {925ec220-eee1-4c6a-a614-9f3d1c3b3f7e}
AllocatedSize          : 0
AllocationUnitSize     : Auto
ColumnIsolation        : PhysicalDisk
Description            :
FaultDomainAwareness   : PhysicalDisk
FootprintOnPool        : 0
FriendlyName           : SSD_Tier
Interleave             : 262144
MediaType              : SSD
NumberOfColumns        : 3
NumberOfDataCopies     : 1
NumberOfGroups         : Auto
ParityLayout           : Rotated Parity
PhysicalDiskRedundancy : 1
ProvisioningType       : Fixed
ResiliencySettingName  : Parity
Size                   : 0
Usage                  : Data
PSComputerName         :

That would basically mean that the tiered space must be a parity one right?

But I'm a bit confused about the Size field, which is 0 for both tiers ...

 

[DieHarke]

I have tried to create some more test spaces with 5 and 6 drives for the HDD tier, but the creation of both failed. I used the same command from above and changed the NumberOfColumns para,eter accordingly. In both cases it was saying: New-VirtualDisk : Invalid Parameter.

So whats the matter there?