Storage spaces problems

[FATILA]

I have 3 hdds setup in parity on 2012R2. One is 3TB, one 4 and one 6. Pool reports 3.64TB free and yet accepts no new data complaining of no space remaining. Of course the 3TB is full but the 4 and 6 have plenty of space left. Is this fixable?

[+BudMan MVC]

well you set it up in parity, what parity did you setup?

[FATILA]

well you set it up in parity, what parity did you setup?

 

Parity with Thin provisioning. Don't remember there being a choice as to what kind of parity you can use. I think the choice would be between two and three way mirroring if selecting that option.

[conna]

You need three or more disks for parity.  If one is full you get your result. You need to add a disk to the pool. After that it might even out.

[+BudMan MVC]

yup you would of had 2 way or 3 way..  Can you post the details of your spaces setup..

 

If your doing 3 way and you have different sized disks, once the small one is full your kind of out of luck for space, etc.  Drive spaces while a move in the right direction is very very limited if you ask me..  Your much better off with $20 add software like stablebit drive pool   https://stablebit.com/

[conna]

I have a 5 disk, 3 way mirror that is performing great.  From my home server experience and experience with storage spaces, the more disks the better.

[FATILA]

It's a parity virtual disk across 3 hdds. There is no X way configuration for parity that I chose anyway. Looks like I will have to swap out disk.

[+BudMan MVC]

I would really suggest you look at stablebit..  You get way more power and features..  So you striped, so like a raid 5 then -- yeah that has lots of issues from my understanding.. Would of been better off NO parity if what your after was size.  There is a article over here that goes over some of the issues and shortcomings of drive spaces http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/storage-spaces-explained-a-great-feature-when-it-works/1/

 

Parity mode is a huge performance hit from my understanding..  I really don't recommend anyone use drive spaces where there are better options out there for pennies.

[dragon2611]

Depending on the Data stored the de-duplication features of storage spaces could be useful

[+BudMan MVC]

Isn't the dedup only on vhd in a vdi deployment?  I doubt that is what this user is doing.

[dragon2611]

Isn't the dedup only on vhd in a vdi deployment?  I doubt that is what this user is doing.

 

AFAIK Server 2012 de-dupe is available in storage spaces regardless of what the data being stored is, if the data meets the de-duplication criteria (e.g older than X days) it will try and de-dupe it.

 

Obviously how well it works will depend on what you're storing on the server, something like backups or even a company file-server would probably get a much higher de-duplication ratio than a media server would.

[+BudMan MVC]

Well that could be very useful in an enterprise/smb I agree.. And also agree if its a media share prob not much use.

 

It would be discussion to see if all the other issues with drive spaces can be overlooked for the use of dedupe.

[FATILA]

Dedupe doesn't work on Refs anyway. It only allows you to config the service if you are creating an NTFS volume and I use refs throughout now.

 

Budman actually you're right, I *don't* want parity but if you only select a simple pool in WSS it forces you to destroy whole volumes when changing disk, and as in spanning a single failure will topple the entire volume as well.

 

Stablebit doesn't list WS2012R2 as a supported OS.

[+BudMan MVC]

yeah it does..

 

 

Yeah the destroy part is a big draw back.. with stable bit you can add a disk (ntfs filesystem) and doesn't do anything to files on it.  You can move them into the pool or not.  You can pick files you might want to have copies of or folders and pick how many copies if you have multiple disks in your pool.

 

You can take any disk out of your pool and read it with any system that understands ntfs, then put in back in the pool, etc. etc.  Other than dedupe which your not using it has way more flexibility for sure!!

 

And I can not say enough about the support!!  It just ROCKS!!!

 

So for example here is my pool how it currently stands.  See the 23GB or so of files that are not part of the pool

 

 

Those are files that are on the disk directly.  You can easy remove and add disks to the pool on the fly without any issues.  They can have different methods of connection.. You could have a sata, pata, esata, usb disk all in the pool, etc.

 

It is a very easy straight forward way to get all your disks into a large pool of space and use it.  There are lots of features for how to balance use of the disk.. You could rules that specific file types get put on specific disk, etc.  There is a trial.. Give it a go,.  Compare for yourself..

 

if a drive fails in your pool - you just loose the files on that disk..  So depending how you setup balancing could be small or larger chuck of your files.  Tie it with their scanner and you should get warning of any issues and be able to replace before any loss of data.  I had a disk showing some possible issues with smart.  I pulled it from the pool, files moved to other disks when I said remove it and all is good.  Have yet to replace it - waiting for DEAL hehehe  almost pulled the trigger on 1 over black friday..  But I have space, and disks only get cheaper, etc.

[FATILA]

Ok will give it a look, thanks.