Windows 10 Storage Spaces Question

ToTheMax · 8 Jul 2016 at 22:21

I've been doing a lot of research on this specifically for building a 4 disk parity array for media/photo storage. I'm liking the flexibility this feature offers for array expansion/optimisation over motherboard hardware raid, I don't need large write speeds.

However I haven't found confirmation or clarity if the OS needs re-installing at any point or moving the array to another machine that this is supported. I hope the storage space isn't tied to the OS which initiated it. Is this possible and if so how?

Thxs.

ANDARIAL · 9 Jul 2016 at 11:21

Have you looked into Stablebit at all?

ToTheMax · 9 Jul 2016 at 14:47

ANDARIAL said:
Have you looked into Stablebit at all?

I have, looks like a much nicer management UI but doesn't seem to support parity, only mirroring (correct me if wrong). Portability of the pooled array isn't an issue though which is a must have feature. Definitely a contender.

Another question, is there any software parity pool solutions that doesn't suck at write performance? I tried a 4 disk parity pool in windows and write speed was almost useless at 35 mb/s.

bledd · 9 Jul 2016 at 15:27

Synology ?

Whatever you decide on, I'd also get a large single drive to keep a backup of your storage.

Simon42 · 9 Jul 2016 at 17:16

BoatyMcBoatface said:
Whatever you decide on, I'd also get a large single drive to keep a backup of your storage.

...and I think this is key!

When I looked at my home server storage a few years back I spent a lot of time thinking about various levels of RAID (hardware and software) for duplication/recovery thinking of the protection that brings. However in practice I've potentially lost more data due to my own finger trouble than hardware failure and RAID will not save you from accidental deletion.

So I went with Stablebit and ignored replication. However my Stablebit pool is backed up to another pool every day (comparison so quicker than a full copy) and then to removable every week and key parts to the cloud every night. I also have HD Sentinel monitoring all drives with emergency copying of data if any drive starts to show errors.

This has worked really well and yes I could lose a days work at most, but in other respects I am far better protected than a RAID mirror.

ToTheMax · 9 Jul 2016 at 18:54

Simon42 said:
...and I think this is key!

When I looked at my home server storage a few years back I spent a lot of time thinking about various levels of RAID (hardware and software) for duplication/recovery thinking of the protection that brings. However in practice I've potentially lost more data due to my own finger trouble than hardware failure and RAID will not save you from accidental deletion.

So I went with Stablebit and ignored replication. However my Stablebit pool is backed up to another pool every day (comparison so quicker than a full copy) and then to removable every week and key parts to the cloud every night. I also have HD Sentinel monitoring all drives with emergency copying of data if any drive starts to show errors.

This has worked really well and yes I could lose a days work at most, but in other respects I am far better protected than a RAID mirror.

Excellent advice and will factor into my solution.

FYI found one answer to storage space portability, and it's yes. Interesting blog article here.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8...-storage-for-scale-resiliency-and-efficiency/

FrankJH · 9 Jul 2016 at 21:07

I used Storage spaces for a very short time and found it highly unreliable.

Like everything Microsoft seem to come up with, its done on the cheap and doesnt really work that reliably.

Would avoid at all costs if I were you.

ToTheMax · 9 Jul 2016 at 22:40

FrankJH said:
I used Storage spaces for a very short time and found it highly unreliable.

Like everything Microsoft seem to come up with, its done on the cheap and doesnt really work that reliably.

Would avoid at all costs if I were you.

Can you explain please why you thought it was unreliable?

WYNIR0 · 9 Jul 2016 at 22:43

Been using it on a couple of systems for 6 months or so. No problems as yet. Have rebuilt one of the systems and the rebuilt OS just recognized the storage space drives as a volume automatically after the rebuild.

ToTheMax · 10 Jul 2016 at 09:20

I've done lots of testing using 4 drives in various configurations and found some interesting configs which might be useful for others. Overall using powershell instead of the GUI I'm finding it's a solid solution for my needs.

- Storage pools are portable between machines
- Resilient storage spaces on disk failure (unplugging) give desktop notifications
- The Windows 10 GUI is extremely limited compared to the options available using powershell
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848643(v=wps.630).aspx
- GUI created 4 disk 2 way mirrored storage performance is the same as a single drive, the space is created with a single column (spanning)
- Powershell created 4 disk 2 way mirrored storage performance is the same as a 2 drive stripe, the space is created with 2 columns (stripping). Equivalent to raid 10 in performance
- GUI created spaces are thin provisioned, takes a performance hit when files are written and space is allocated from the pool on the fly.
- Powershell spaces can be configured with fixed provisioning, which pre-allocates space from the pool. Has a major impact on parity setups
- GUI created parity spaces have very poor performance, approx 35 mb/s writes
- Powershell created fixed provisioned parity spaces doubles performance, approx 70 mb/s writes

In summary for my 4 disk setup I could have;
- 4 disk 2 way mirror which is equivalent to raid 10, excellent performance but less space. Performance is almost 100% scaling read/write with drive number.
- 4 disk parity fixed provisioned, excellent space with OK read speeds and barely acceptable write speeds (70mb/s)

Buffalo2102 · 10 Jul 2016 at 21:04

WYNIR0 said:
Been using it on a couple of systems for 6 months or so. No problems as yet. Have rebuilt one of the systems and the rebuilt OS just recognized the storage space drives as a volume automatically after the rebuild.

^^^ This is my experience too. Have rebuilt my system several times and the new OS has just detected and picked up the storage spaces pool every time.

Draeconis · 12 Sep 2016 at 01:38

Sorry for the minor thread necromancy, but I'm having issues with setting up Storage Spaces on Windows 10, specifically combining Parity and ReFS.

I seem to be able to set Parity across 4 disks up fine, but only on NTFS. I can see ReFS, but when selected it formats.. then automatically deletes the storage space. Then I get a window saying 'Can't delete the storage space', with the helpful detail 'The parameter is incorrect. (0x00000057).

It doesn't create a volume I can use, despite helpfully saying that the status of the pool is 'OK'.

The issue seems to be formatting to ReFS; any way I try, either through Storage Spaces or just single volumes, ReFS formatting always fails.

ToTheMax · 12 Sep 2016 at 19:47

Draeconis said:
Sorry for the minor thread necromancy, but I'm having issues with setting up Storage Spaces on Windows 10, specifically combining Parity and ReFS.

I seem to be able to set Parity across 4 disks up fine, but only on NTFS. I can see ReFS, but when selected it formats.. then automatically deletes the storage space. Then I get a window saying 'Can't delete the storage space', with the helpful detail 'The parameter is incorrect. (0x00000057).

It doesn't create a volume I can use, despite helpfully saying that the status of the pool is 'OK'.

The issue seems to be formatting to ReFS; any way I try, either through Storage Spaces or just single volumes, ReFS formatting always fails.

According to this even if you could configure REFS with parity it would be pointless given it's design;
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1196299

Parity storage spaces is so slow I wouldn't recommend it unless you configure it with a SSD tier, sacrifice a bit of space for mirror & refs is the best all round solution imo for both resilience and speed. Oh and don't use the UI to create it if you are using 4 or more drives.

Draeconis · 13 Sep 2016 at 11:14

Thanks, that's interesting. So bizarre, with OS X and OpenZFS, I had a RAIDZ storage pool which is basically the same, and the read/write performance was great.

Took your advice and created a Two-Way Mirror with ReFS instead, which worked fine. Used the GUI to create it as I've no idea how to create it in Powershell, seems to perform well so far.

ToTheMax · 14 Sep 2016 at 16:45

Draeconis said:
Thanks, that's interesting. So bizarre, with OS X and OpenZFS, I had a RAIDZ storage pool which is basically the same, and the read/write performance was great.

Took your advice and created a Two-Way Mirror with ReFS instead, which worked fine. Used the GUI to create it as I've no idea how to create it in Powershell, seems to perform well so far.

Run powershell in administrator mode after using the UI to add disks to the pool. Then to create the space run a command like this to create a multi column space (columns = no. of disks / 2);

New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Data" -FriendlyName "Data_Mirror" –ResiliencySettingName Mirror -Size 10TB -ProvisioningType Thin

Then format it to REFS, perforance like a RAID10 array.