Storage Spaces woes

[JacobSteele]

Hey,

Trying out Windows Server vNext for the first time, setting up a server for testing. I have run into a few issues, not sure if they are bugs or not.

1. I attached 12 drives to my computer, 9 of which are HDDs. I attempted to create a Storage Pool and Virtual Drive using the 9 drives, 

New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Data" -FriendlyName "Tank" -UseMaximumSize -NumberOfColumns 9 -ResiliencySettingName "Parity" -ProvisioningType Fixed -PhysicalDiskRedundancy 1

However I receive the error that NumberOfColumns is outside of the valid range. This seems against the documentation which recommends the NumberOfColumns be set to the number of physical drives. Is there a bug where you are not able to select a number greater then 8? It also fails when I attempt to create the Virtual Disk through the Server Manager tool with the same error. 

The second one is the ReFS Dedupe support, I attempted to enable it on my 100TB Virtual Disk, and I received an error back stating de-dupe is only supported on drives below 64TB. Will this increase before the final version, or is this a hard limit? 

Actual error message:

New-VirtualDisk : The value for NumberOfColumns is outside of the supported range of values. Activity ID: {3160ebdc-5f05-0002-671f-6231055fda01} At line:1 char:1 + New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Data" -FriendlyName "MyVirt ... + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (StorageWMI:ROOT/Microsoft/...SFT_StoragePool) [New-VirtualDisk], CimException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : StorageWMI 49006,New-VirtualDisk

[#2]

@JacobSteele 

Try "-MediaType HDD" to specify the HDDs.
Explanation: If the SSDs and HDDs are of different sizes the number of SSDs are used as reference, in that case "three".
If you want to use storage tiering you have to use "New-StorageTier" bevore "New-VirtualDisk".
If your DON'T want to use storage tiering I recommend two pools, one with the HDDs one with the SSDs.
For example:
New-StoragePool -FriendlyName HDD-Pool -StorageSubSystemFriendlyName "Windows Storage*" -LogicalSectorSizeDefault 4096 -PhysicalDisks (Get-PhysicalDisk).Where({$_.MediaType -eq "HDD" -and $_.CanPool -eq "True"})

New-StoragePool -FriendlyName HDD-Pool -StorageSubSystemFriendlyName "Windows Storage*" -LogicalSectorSizeDefault 4096 -PhysicalDisks (Get-PhysicalDisk).Where({$_.MediaType -eq "HDD" -and $_.CanPool -eq "True"})

EDIT:

I recommend testing New-VirtualDisk with "-WriteCacheSize", "-Interleave" and "-AllocationUnitSize" which gives best performance.

For example in your case:  "-WriteCacheSize 1GB -Interleave 8KB -AllocationUnitSize 512MB", and then format the news vdisk with 64 KB NTFS cluster size, that may give best performance. The Microsoft defaults for partiy are not well chosen.

If you want to use dual parity you may have to test more extensively since the NTFS cluster size cannot be divided by 7, or use 10 HDDs.

[#3]

@Joachim_Otahal 

I confirmed that all 9 devices in my storage pool are 10.9T (12TB) HDDs. None of the SSDs are currently in the 9 drive pool, however I still have the same issue. Even using less columns then 9, I am unable to set an interleave of 8KB, it is outside the valid range as well.