Making the Hot Spare Kick In in Storage Spaces

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Playing with Storage Spaces to work out if it is the tech for me.

This is what I did:

1) I created a Storage Space containing 4 250GB disks, of which 3 were set as data stores and 1 as a hot spare.

2) I created a parity fixed virtual disk (500GB or so) which spanned the 3 data store disks.

3) I created a volume in the virtual disk, formatted and made it my 'D' drive.

4) I copied my entire collection of FLAC files into the volume.

5) I pulled one of the disks, Server Manager reported the virtual disk with a 'warning: incomplete' - the volume itself reports itself as 'healthy'

I would now expect the hot spare to kick in to replace the disk I pulled to put myself back in a consistent state (albeit without a hot spare).

However, nothing has happened, so questions:

1) How long before the hot spare kicks in?

2) Is it meant to kick in automatically or am I meant to do something? If I am meant to do something, what is it?

This is on Server 2012 RC, so if this is a bug, do let me know...

Thanks to anyone that can help....

[theyarecomingforyou]

It should kick in automatically, although I'm not sure how long it takes. There is a command you can use to automatically trigger a rebuild.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

That's what I thought too, and that the kick off would be pretty quick. However, it has been sitting there like that for about 2 hours.

There doesn't seem to be any disk activity on the machine either - so it doesn't seem to be doing it in the background...

[ToneKnee]

By any chance did you pull the hot spare out?

[ToneKnee]

Just to addon. There is a Repair command in powershell that can trigger a repair, but, from what I read, the drives will resync eventually.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

By any chance did you pull the hot spare out?

Nope - definitely did not pull out the hot spare as the disk is still showing as being online, whereas the one I did pull, marked as a Data Store is marked with a comms error.

I did not get a chance to check this morning if it had decided to resync - will check when I get home from work tonight - by which time it would have been a good 20 hours...

I know there are commands that can be run, but they don't appear to do anything - or when doing the same thing from the Server Manager.

Will report back later...

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Over 24 hours later and still no rebuild!

What's the point of a hot spare if it doesn't automatically use it :-(

Anyone have any ideas?

[ToneKnee]

Over 24 hours later and still no rebuild!

What's the point of a hot spare if it doesn't automatically use it :-(

Anyone have any ideas?

There must be a reason why it didn't happen. :s Erm, try doing it manually and try again?

[n_K]

Can you still access any/all the data on the drive? If not then it's not rebuilding because the array is completely dead.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

There must be a reason why it didn't happen. :s Erm, try doing it manually and try again?

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that it may be my only choice.

Can you still access any/all the data on the drive? If not then it's not rebuilding because the array is completely dead.

Have absolutely no problems accessing any of the data on the volume.

[Guest]

An aged post but did you get to the bottom of this?

I've been trying this in a ESXi VM and find the same thing. When deleting the drive Windows sees it has lost connectivity to one of the disks and reports Warning: Degraded but the hot spare is never used.

[cybertimber2008]

This topic might get closed, but here goes:

It seems from the TechNet article (http://technet.micro...y/jj899886.aspx) that it might be in the "disabled" state under Disconnected Disks.

Setting | Behavior

Auto | If a hot spare is available in the storage pool follow the Enabled logic. Otherwise, follow the Disabled logic.

Enabled | Mark the disk as Failed, replace it with a hot spare, and then retry the operation

Disabled | Wait for the disk to reconnect or for an administrator to take action (do not use any available hot spares)

Note

If an entire enclosure is disconnected, no action is taken even when set to Auto or Enabled because the system has likely lost more disks than can be replaced by hot spares.

[Guest]

Looks like its already set to auto...

RetireMissingPhysicalDisks : Auto

[Mikeattak]

On a "drive-pull" event detected by Windows, the hot spare will be used, and resync will start, if you write data on a volume that is using the affected virtualdisk.