Adding drives to storage pool with same unique id

i have seen a lot of discussion about using storage pools with raid controllers that reporting the same unique id across multiple drives.
I am yet to find a solution to my problem is that i can't add 2 drives to storage pool because they share the same unique id. Is there a way i can get around this?
Thanks brendon

Thanks for your reply,
However, Storage spaces uses the uniqueid that the raid / sata controller reports for the drive. in my case this is the output from powershell
PS C:\Users\tfs> get-physicaldisk | ft FriendlyName, uniqueid
FriendlyName uniqueid
PhysicalDisk1 2039374232333633
PhysicalDisk2 2039374232333633
PhysicalDisk10 SCSI\Disk&Ven_Hitachi&Prod_HDS722020ALA330\4&37df755d&0&...
PhysicalDisk8 SCSI\Disk&Ven_WDC&Prod_WD10EACS-00D6B0\4&37df755d&0&0300...
PhysicalDisk6 SCSI\Disk&Ven_WDC&Prod_WD10EADS-00M2B0\4&37df755d&0&0100...
PhysicalDisk7 SCSI\Disk&Ven_&Prod_ST2000DL003-9VT1\4&37df755d&0&020000...
PhysicalDisk0 2039374232333633
PhysicalDisk4 SCSI\Disk&Ven_&Prod_ST3000DM001-9YN1\5&10a0425f&0&010000...
PhysicalDisk3 SCSI\Disk&Ven_Hitachi&Prod_HDS723030ALA640\5&10a0425f&0&...
PhysicalDisk9 SCSI\Disk&Ven_&Prod_ST31500341AS\4&37df755d&0&040000:sho...
PhysicalDisk5 SCSI\Disk&Ven_WDC&Prod_WD1001FALS-00J7B\4&37df755d&0&000...
as you notice i have 3 drives with the same uniqueid. This i cannot change and this is what i am looking for a workaround for.
If you have any thoughts that would be great.
Thanks in advance
Brendon

Similar Messages

Zfs storage pools with EMC Snapview clones

We're currently using Veritas VM and Snapview clones to present multiple copies of our database data to the same host. I've found that Veritas doesn't like multiple copies of the same disk group being imported on a host and found a way around this. My question is: does zfs have this problem? If I switch to zfs for our new system and create a storage pool for each group of data files, (we put the data files with our tables on one filesystem, indexes on another, redo logs another, etc.) can I mount a clone of the indexes storage pool (for example) on the same host as the original?

We're currently using Veritas VM and Snapview clones
to present multiple copies of our database data to
the same host. I've found that Veritas doesn't like
multiple copies of the same disk group being imported
on a host and found a way around this. VxVM 5.0 has some tools to redo the ID on the copy. That might make it easier to deal with. Of course that brings up other issues if you ever want to use that copy and roll it back as primary.
(If you don't have 5.0, you can still do it, but it's a lot more fiddley)
My question
is: does zfs have this problem? If I switch to zfs
for our new system and create a storage pool for each
group of data files, (we put the data files with our
tables on one filesystem, indexes on another, redo
logs another, etc.) can I mount a clone of the
indexes storage pool (for example) on the same host
as the original?No. Same issue. The pool/volume group has a (hopefully) unique identifier to find the pieces of the storage. When the identified piece starts showing up in multiple locations, it knows things are wrong. You'd have to have some method of modifying that data on the copied disks. Today, I don't think there's any support in ZFS for doing that.
Darren

Multiple AD with same unique name

Our requirement is configure 2 AD servers with GRC ( version 10). But the tricky part is around 300 users in both the domians are same. ef.
Domain \ User name
NBC \ test
PBS \ test
Now I have to integrate these 2 domains in ABAP. My problem is once I hook NBC AD it will create test and if I hook up PBS it will not create test. But I need that too. (may be I want pass say test1 instead of test) Can this be doable? How?
Kedar

Our requirement is...
Yep, had this requirement as well.
All these various user name collisions and worse is different IDs for the same person can be solved relatively easily by IdM.
But best practice is still to remove the collisions and use unique IDs. Same goes for deleting users (dont do it).
Good luck.
Cheers,
Julius

Adding a Second Project Site with same restore data

This is the first time I've had to accomplish this
I have a dev server where I restore a backup from 2 weeks ago to http://devserver/pwa
My team has asked for a restore from 2 weeks + 1 day to http://devserver:99/pwa - I've tried deleting site collections, tried several other ways of doing the restore; however, during the mount-spdatabase I get only 1 site to come back (pwa) but
it doesnt show in the site list
The enumallwebs shows the following (notice the in sitemap)
stsadm -o enumallwebs -databasename content_database
databse site count 1
<site ID = random characters > <owner = farmguy> <In sitemap = False>
Web count = 235
==============
I believe/know the issue deals with the same site ID being on the first pwa site; however when I try to do a Mount-SPContentDatabase content-database -WebApplication "http://dev:99" -AssignNewDatabaseID I still get the same issues - new database
ID but still same site ID for the "dev/pwa" site database
Is there anyway to clone (yes I've seen the other articles) or have two sites with the same data?
I've also thought about trying to export the stsadm enumallwebs data and copying that to a new PWA site but have been unsuccessful in the export (or even finding a way to do it)
Can I get any ideas on how to either
1) Change the site ID from a database backup/restore
2) Restore a PWA site to the same server/database server
3) other ideas?
My team members would like to do a comparison of the two dates between a project to check for differences (I just found out about
FluentPro Audit Lite Pro)
Any and all suggestions would be appreciated...
Thank you

I'm still experiencing issues
I tried the following (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/projectserver/en-US/edc6f56a-5850-4102-841b-32d4df6e6882/how-i-to-restore-the-project-site-deleted-on-project-server-2010-?forum=projectserver2010general) by recovering the data from an unattached
Database (I also did the site collection backup)
1) Trying to do an Import-SPWeb but this was unsuccessful
created a web application 99 -> provisioned a pwa with the old databases -> data appear in project center but when you click on the sites it gives an error message
created a web application 99 -> create a site collection -> provisioned a pwa with the old databases -> data appear in project center but when you click on the sites it gives an error message - same as above
the below while it held promise it didnt work for going against a separate port... using the data from an unattached content database export (link above)
also reference (http://pwmather.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/move-a-sharepoint-2010-sub-site-to-a-different-location-on-the-same-farm-sp2010-ps2010-powershell/)
2) Tried to do a SPSite Restore and it ends up deleting the provisioned PWA and still appears to be there but no PWA soo
3) removing the ophaned PWA site (http://mrhodes.net/2011/02/24/fixing-an-orphaned-site-collection-within-project-server-2010/) wont help since it will remove the PWA sites/subsites from the content database I want
4) I'm still unsure how to approach what Krishnp stated...
unless #2 was his approach
Any other help would be greatly appreciated - I'm trying everything it's time consuming since the backup files take over an hour to restore to a site - while it is faster to do the original when its just one content database/4 pwa databases...
I've read its possible to do to different ports (of course I closed the page) but I have only seen one post point it out
thanks again

Adding users to PAB group with same last name as existing

Cannot add user to PAB group when user has same last name as an existing Group member.
Seems to work, see number tick up and green bar flash, but, never really adds.

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the other self support options and support programs available.
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correct newsgroup. (http://forums.novell.com)
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How to move a virtual disk's physical allocation within a Storage Pool

I have a pool of 3x500GB where one the physical drives is having intermittent issues. Currently, there is only one parity Virtual Disk of 300GB Fixed across 3 columns. I want to replace the bad drive with a good one. The old way (pre-2012) was replace the
disk, repair the RAID 5, resync and done. These basic steps are not working.
So far I have added a 4th 500GB drive to the pool. After searching and failing to find a way to move the data non-destructively, I decided to just pull the data cable on the disk I wanted to replace. After refresh/rescan, the disconnected drive shows "lost
communication" and the virtual disk (after trying to repair) shows "unknown" (but the volume on that disk is accessible in Explorer). When I try to remove the physical disk in Server Manager, I get "The selected physical disk cannot
be removed". Reading the error message, I see that the replacement disk cannot contain any part of a virtual disk. The replacement disk that I just added appears to have some space allocated (possibly because I have tried this same procedure a couple
of times already?). When I look at the parity disk properties/health, it shows all four physical disks under "physical disks in use".
I have deleted and recreated a lot of storage pools lately while trying to understand how they work but I would like to avoid that this time. The data on the virtual disk in question is highly deduplicated and it took quite a while to get it that way. Since
I can't find a way to copy/mirror the disk while keeping it fully deduplicated, I would need 3x the space to copy it all off, or a lot of time to load up and deduplicate a new virtual disk.
I have several questions:
1. How can a 3 column parity disk use parts of four physical disks? And can that be fixed without recreating the virtual disk?
2. When creating a virtual disk (for example a 3 column disk in a pool that has four or more physical drives), is there a way to specify which physical disks to use?
3. I understand that after a physical disk failure, the recovery process will move a virtual disk's allocation to a replacement disk, but can a virtual disk's allocation be moved manually among physical disks within the same storage pool
using a PS script?
4. Can a deduplicated virtual disk be moved/mirrored/backed up without expanding the data?
Any help is appreciated.

Im still fighting with storage pools and need more tests to be done and have a lot of questions my self but ther goes what I understood so far.
You may define physical disks used for virtual disk by Powershell ,
for list of all commands follow this:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848705(v=wps.620).aspx ,
specific command defining physical disks to be used on already existing virtual disk:
Example 4: Manually assigning physical disks to a virtual disk
This example gets two physical disks that have already been added to the storage pool and designated as ManualSelect disks,
PhysicalDisk3 and PhysicalDisk4, and assigns them to the virtual disk
UserData.
PS C:\> Add-PhysicalDisk –VirtualDiskFriendlyName UserData –PhysicalDisks (Get-PhysicalDisk -FriendlyName PhysicalDisk3, PhysicalDisk4)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848702(v=wps.620).aspx
If You haven't seen this yet You may check it out http://blogs.technet.com/b/yungchou/archive/2011/12/06/free-ebooks.aspx

Setting Up Storage Pool - Invalid Parameter

Hey all,
I've run in to an issue when trying to create a Storage Pool in Windows Server 2012 R2. I have two 4TB drives and I'm trying to create a pool out of them (intent is to Mirror), but when I've gone through the pool creation wizard I simply get the following
error:
"Could not create storage pool. Invalid Parameter"
Does anyone have any hints on where to start diagnosing this? Both drives are wiped, both drives can be pooled, and both have different uniqueIDs.
Thanks in advance!

Hi,
Which type of the physical disks are added to the Storage Pool? Are the virtual hard drives (VHDs) created by Windows Azure? If so, the physical disk size advertised by Azure VHDs is not compatible with Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces.
For more detailed information, you could refer to the thread below:
Error creating new Storage Pool in 2012R2 "invalid parameter"
If the Windws Server 2012 R2 is a virtual machine on Windows Azure, please also check if there is any error message in the Event Log.
Best Regards,
Mandy
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected]
Thanks for the reply,
The Windows Server 2012 R2 is on my own physical server and isn't virtualized. I'm simply trying to create a new storage pool from two physical HDD:s, the disks are Seagate 4TB disks. Both the disks are listed in the storage pool creation wizard. I checked
the Event Log also but there's nothing, the lack of proper error information is making this a bit challenging to figure out.
I've also tried using PowerShell to do the work:
New-StoragePool -FriendlyName POOL1 -StorageSubSystemFriendlyName (Get-StorageSubSystem).FriendlyName -PhysicalDisks (Get-PhysicalDisk -CanPool $true)
The same error results:
New-StoragePool : Invalid Parameter
At line:1 char:1
+ New-StoragePool -FriendlyName POOL1 -StorageSubSystemFriendlyName (Get-StorageSu ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (StorageWMI:ROOT/Microsoft/...torageSubSystem) [New-StoragePool], CimException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : StorageWMI 5,New-StoragePool

Creation of new storage pool on iomega ix12-300r failed

I have a LenovoEMC ix12-300r (iomega version).
IX12-300r serial number: 2JAA21000A
There is at present one storagepool (SP0) consisting of 8 drives (RAID5).
HDD 1-8 (existing SP0): ST31000520AS CC38
I have aquired 4 new Seagate ST3000DM001 drives as per recommendation on this forum:
https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/33028/kw/ix12%20recommended%20hdd
I want to make a new storage pool with these 4 drives:
HDD9-12 (new HDD and SP1): ST3000DM001-1CH166 CC29
I have used diskpart to clean all 4 drives and the IX12-300r can see the drives just fine.
When I try to make a new storage pool, naming it SP1 as the only storage pool is named SP0, I get an error: "Storage Pool Creation Failed"
Please advise as to how I can get these drives up and running.
Regards
Kristen Thiesen
adena IT

I have pulled the 8 hdd from storage pool 0.
Then I rebooted with the 4 new hdd in slot 9 - 12.
Result: http://device IP/manage/restart.html, with the message: Confirmation required. You must authorize overwrite existing data to start using this device. Are you sure you want to overwrite existing data?k [yes] / [no]
I then answer yes four times anticipating that each new drive needs an acceptance, but the dialog just keeps poping up...
Then I shut down the device and repositioned the 4 new drives to slot 1-4 - but the same thing happened...
Any suggestions?

Install Windows Server 2012 R2 VM on Storage Spaces with Storage Tiers

Hey guys
In my small/medium sized company we will soon update to Windows Server 2012 R2. I would like to implement virtual servers using Hyper-V. I didn't find a lot of information about Hyper-V in combination with storages spaces and autoamted storage tiers.
And this is very confusing to me as it seems to me that this would be the best practice as it is the most cost-efficient and most elegant solution.
My ideal scenario:
With Hyper-V I virtualize two Windows Server 2012 R2 instances. So two separate virtual machines.
I use the following disk setup:
1x cheap HDD 40GB for hyper-v server 2012 r2 core.
2x SSD 200GB (enterprise-grade)
2x HDD 4TB (7.2k, enterprise-grade)
Step 1:
I will install Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 Core on the 40GB HDD. Via command line, I will create a storage pool with automated tiered storage using the SSDs and the HDDs in mirrored mode the following way:
With Tiered Storage, I create a storage pool containing the SSDs and the HDDs. Then I create storage space A (1TB) and B (3.2TB) with the SSDs in a mirrored setup and the HDDs in a mirrored setup. The SSDs for the „hot files“ and the HDDs for the „cold files“.
Step2:
Ontop of the storage space A I want to install the first Windows Server 2012 R2 instance with Active directory. On storage space B I want to install the second Windows Server 2012 R2 instance for a business application to run on it.
Conclusion:
The SSDs are mirrored and therefore one SSD can fail.
The 4TB HDDs are mirrored and therefore one HDD can fail.
I have a fast and easy scalable environment.
But in the Internet I found many information that it’s not possible to install an operating system onto a storage tier.
Question 1:
Is this setup possible?
Question 2:
If this setup is possible, why is not everyone doing it?
Question 3:
Is it possible to do Step 1 over a GUI from a remote machine?
Question 4:
If the creation of Storage Tiers in the Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 is not possible. Would it work to use a Windows Server 2012 R2 as a parent system on the 40GB HDD? To do Step 1?
I would gladly get some feedback of people knowing Storage Tiers well.
Thanks a lot!

I would absolutely prefer a GUI. But a Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Licence allows you to run two VM machines.
It also grants you a physical installation ("POSE" in the licensing documents). You can buy one copy of WS2012R2 Standard, install it on the hardware, enable Hyper-V, and then operate two virtual machines with WS2012R2 Standard ("VOSE"
in the licensing documents). The only restriction is that the management operating system (POSE) can only run services and applications meant to manage the virtual machines and/or the management operating system. The Hyper-V Server license is the same way
so it's not really any different.
In short, given the benefits of the GUI at your stage of learning, you have no solid reason not to install the full system and take advantage of it. You can disable the GUI later once you get your footing. Or not. Whatever suits you. However, in response
to your Question 3, you can do this all remotely. Once you get WS2012R2 installed in a guest, you can use it to manage the management operating system if you want. There are many options.
But then I would also need to have redundancy on the 40GB HDD as if this HDD brakes, all others brake as well?
Yes, you're going to want some redundancy for the management operating system. But, you've listed 5 drives in your original layout. You don't really have a 5-bay system, do you? Is there an empty sixth bay? Could you not get two 40 GB drives instead of one
and use hardware RAID-1?
Eric Siron
Altaro Hyper-V Blog
I am an independent blog contributor, not an Altaro employee. I am solely responsible for the content of my posts.

Two native iSCSI LUNs in a 2012 storage pool

I have a Windows Server 2012 storage pool connected to a single SAN VIA iSCSI. I'd like to add a second SAN and present the virtual disks as part of the same pool to extend my total storage. Is this possible?

Hi,
I do not have the environment to test if add LUNs from different SAN will work or not but personally I believe it will work as SAN (LUN) is supported to be added into a storage pool.
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and un-mark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected]

Problem = Disks arent available in Storage Pools

Hello,
I have two windows server 2012 with 3 disks on each (1 basic and 2 dynamic). One of them (dynamic) is unallocated. When I want to create storage pool I dont see the disks in PHYSICAL DISKS section is Storage Pools. All of disks has more than 4GB space.
I read here but wasnt useful:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/23298436-b4be-4ca1-abb5-f9ece6b6c7f4/no-disks-available-for-storage-pool?forum=winserver8gen
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/781ce6d5-c560-424b-9ff6-14939301865c/action?threadDisplayName=quotno-disks-to-displayquot-in-dpm-console-and-no-disks-are-available-to-add-to-a-storage-pool

Hi,
Dynamic disks are not appropriate to be added to a storage pool. They cannot be be listed in Primordial area.
For more detailed information, please refer to the links below:
Storage Spaces on dynamic disks. Is it possible?
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/534de1e2-ea61-4278-8447-94df5801ab4e/storage-spaces-on-dynamic-disks-is-it-possible
Using the Storage Pools page in Server Manager to create storage spaces
http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2012/12/06/using-the-storage-pools-page-in-server-manager-to-create-storage-spaces.aspx
Best Regards,
Mandy
We
are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.
Thank you very much, your information was useful and my problem solved.

2012 New Cluster Adding A Storage Pool fails with Error Code 0x8007139F

Trying to setup a brand new cluster (first node) on Server 2012. Hardware passes cluster validation tests and consists of a dell 2950 with an MD1000 JBOD enclosure configured with a bunch of 7.2K RPM SAS and 15k SAS Drives. There is no RAID card or any other
storage fabric, just a SAS adapter and an external enclosure.
I can create a regular storage pool just fine and access it with no issues on the same box when I don't add it to the cluster. However when I try to add it to the cluster I keep getting these errors on adding a disk:
Error Code: 0x8007139F if I try to add a disk (The group or resource is not in the correct state to perform the requested operation)
When adding the Pool I get this error:
Error Code 0x80070016 The Device Does not recognize the command
Full Error on adding the pool
Cluster resource 'Cluster Pool 1' of type 'Storage Pool' in clustered role 'b645f6ed-38e4-11e2-93f4-001517b8960b' failed. The error code was '0x16' ('The device does not recognize the command.').
Based on the failure policies for the resource and role, the cluster service may try to bring the resource online on this node or move the group to another node of the cluster and then restart it. Check the resource and group state using Failover Cluster
Manager or the Get-ClusterResource Windows PowerShell cmdlet.
if I try to just add the raw disks to the storage -- without using a pool or anything - almost every one of them but one fails with incorrect function except for one (a 7.2K RPM SAS drive). I cannot see any difference between it and the other disks. Any
ideas? The error codes aren't anything helpful. I would imagine there's something in the drive configuration or hardware I am missing here I just don't know what considering the validation is passing and I am meeting the listed prerequisites.
If I can provide any more details that would assist please let me know. Kind of at a loss here.

Hi,
You mentioned you use Dell MD 1000 as storage, Dell MD 1000 is Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
Windows Server cluster do support DAS storage, Failover clusters include improvements to the way the cluster communicates with storage, improving the performance of a storage area network (SAN) or direct attached storage (DAS).
But the Raid controller PERC 5/6 in MD 1000 may not support cluster technology. I did find its official article, but I found its next generation MD 1200 use Raid controller PERC H 800 is still not support cluster technology.
You may contact Dell to check that.
For more information please refer to following MS articles:
Technical Guidebook for PowerVault MD1200 and MD 1220
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/storage-powervault-md12x0-technical-guidebook.pdf
Dell™ PERC 6/i, PERC 6/E and CERC 6/I User’s Guide
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/RAID/PERC6/en/PDF/en_ug.pdf
Hope this helps!
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How to design Storage Spaces with a large number of drives

I am wondering how one might go about designing a storage space for a large number of drives. Specifically I've got 45 x 4TB drives. As i am not extremely familiar with storage spaces, i'm a bit confused as to how I should go about designing this. Here is
how i would do it in hardware raid and i'd like to know how to best match this setup in Storage Spaces. I've been burned twice now by poorly designed storage spaces and i don't want to get burned again. I want to make sure if a drive fails, i'm able to properly
replace it without SS tossing it's cookies.
In the hardware raid world, i would divide these 45 x 4TB drives into three separate 15 disk Raid 6's. (Thus losing 6 drives to parity) Each raid 6 would show up as a separate volume/drive to the parent
OS. If any disk failed in any of the three raids, i would simply pull it out and put a new disk back in and the raid would rebuild itself.
Here is my best guess for storage spaces. I would create 3 separate storage pools each containing 15 disks. I would then create a separate
Dual Parity Virtual Disk for each pool. (Also losing 6 drives to parity) Each virtual disk would appear as a separate volume/disk
to the parent OS. Did i miss anything?
Additionally, is there any benefit to breaking up my 45 disks into 3 separate pools? Would it be better to create one giant pool with all 45 disks and then create 3 (or however many) virtual disks on top of that one pool?

I am wondering how one might go about designing a storage space for a large number of drives. Specifically I've got 45 x 4TB drives. As i am not extremely familiar with storage spaces, i'm a bit confused as to how I should go about designing this. Here is
how i would do it in hardware raid and i'd like to know how to best match this setup in Storage Spaces. I've been burned twice now by poorly designed storage spaces and i don't want to get burned again. I want to make sure if a drive fails, i'm able to properly
replace it without SS tossing it's cookies.
In the hardware raid world, i would divide these 45 x 4TB drives into three separate 15 disk Raid 6's. (Thus losing 6 drives to parity) Each raid 6 would show up as a separate volume/drive to the parent
OS. If any disk failed in any of the three raids, i would simply pull it out and put a new disk back in and the raid would rebuild itself.
Here is my best guess for storage spaces. I would create 3 separate storage pools each containing 15 disks. I would then create a separate
Dual Parity Virtual Disk for each pool. (Also losing 6 drives to parity) Each virtual disk would appear as a separate volume/disk
to the parent OS. Did i miss anything?
Additionally, is there any benefit to breaking up my 45 disks into 3 separate pools? Would it be better to create one giant pool with all 45 disks and then create 3 (or however many) virtual disks on top of that one pool?
1) Try to avoid parity and esp. double parity RAIDs with a typical VM workload. It's dominated by small reads (OK) and small writes (not OK as whole parity stripe gets updated with any "ready-modify-write" sequence). As a result writes would be DOG slow.
Another nasty parity RAID characteristic is very long rebuild times... It's pretty easy to get second (third with double parity) drive failure during re-build process and that would render the whole RAID set useless. Solution would be to use RAID10. Much safer,
faster to work and rebuild compared to RAID5/6 but wastes half of raw capacity...
2) Creating "islands" of storage is an extremely effective way of stealing IOPS away from your config. Typical modern RAID set would run out of IOPS long before running out of capacity so unless you're planning to have a file dump of an ice cold data or
CCTV storage you'll absolutely need all IOPS from all spindles @ the same time. This again means One Big RAID10, OBR10.
Hope this helped a bit :) Good luck!
StarWind VSAN [Virtual SAN] clusters Hyper-V without SAS, Fibre Channel, SMB 3.0 or iSCSI, uses Ethernet to mirror internally mounted SATA disks between hosts.

How storage spaces mirror onto multiple storage pool drives...

Tricky question to pose..
I currently have 2 * 2TB drives in a storage pool. I have a 2 TB storage space assigned to this pool (lets call them A and B). I have 2TB of mirrored storage across 4TB of drives. All is well...
If I add a third 2TB drive "C" to the storage pool, how will 2-way mirroring work now? My hope is that it will evenly mirror across each drive in the pool ( 1TB mirrored across A + B, 1TB across A+ C and 1TB across B + C) giving me effectively
3TB of mirrored storage.
If it does work as I hope, does the server rebalance the mirroring? Say I have already used 1.8GB of storage by the time I add in the 3rd drive, there is only 0.2GB on each of the morrored drives available. When I add in the 3rd drive, if the
server does not re-allocate, then I would only gain 0.4GB of storage (0.2GB A+C, 0.2GB B+C) leaving 1.4GB unusable.
If not as I hoped, how do I make use of the 3rd drive? I assume the 3rd drive is useless in that pool unless I do 3-way mirroring or I add another 4th drive?
Thanks, Mark.

Tricky question to pose..
I currently have 2 * 2TB drives in a storage pool. I have a 2 TB storage space assigned to this pool (lets call them A and B). I have 2TB of mirrored storage across 4TB of drives. All is well...
If I add a third 2TB drive "C" to the storage pool, how will 2-way mirroring work now? My hope is that it will evenly mirror across each drive in the pool ( 1TB mirrored across A + B, 1TB across A+ C and 1TB across B + C) giving me effectively
3TB of mirrored storage.
If it does work as I hope, does the server rebalance the mirroring? Say I have already used 1.8GB of storage by the time I add in the 3rd drive, there is only 0.2GB on each of the morrored drives available. When I add in the 3rd drive, if the
server does not re-allocate, then I would only gain 0.4GB of storage (0.2GB A+C, 0.2GB B+C) leaving 1.4GB unusable.
If not as I hoped, how do I make use of the 3rd drive? I assume the 3rd drive is useless in that pool unless I do 3-way mirroring or I add another 4th drive?
Thanks, Mark.
A Storage Spaces mirror configuration stores 2 copies of each data block on 2 different physical drives. However, it does not balance the data. So in your specific example, adding a third drive to a mirror environment won't help much.
You would really need to add a fourth 2 TB drive at the same time.
You can get more info on Storage Spaces here.

Can ZFS storage pools share a physical drive w/ the root (UFS) file system?

I wonder if I'm missing something here, because I was under the impression ZFS offered ultimate flexability until I encountered the following fine print 50 pages into the ZFS Administration Guide:
"Before creating a storage pool, you must determine which devices will store your data. These devices must be disks of at least 128 Mbytes in size, and _they must not be in use by other parts of the operating system_. The devices can be individual slices on a preformatted disk, or they can be entire disks that ZFS formats as a single large slice."
I thought it was frustrating that ZFS couldn't be used as a boot disk, but the fact that I can't even use the rest of the space on the boot drive for ZFS is aggrivating. Or am I missing something? The following text appears elsewhere in the guide, and suggests that I can use the 7th slice:
"A storage device can be a whole disk (c0t0d0) or _an individual slice_ (c0t0d0s7). The recommended mode of operation is to use an entire disk, in which case the disk does not need to be specially formatted."
Currently, I've just installed Solaris 10 (6/11) on an Ultra 10. I removed the slice for /export/users (c0t0d0s7) from the default layout during the installation. So there's approx 6 GB in UFS space, and 1/2 GB in swap space. I want to make the 70GB of unused HDD space a ZFS pool.
Suggestions? I read somewhere that the other slices must be unmounted before creating a pool. How do I unmount the root partition, then use the ZFS tools that reside in that unmounted space to create a pool?
Edited by: MindFuq on Oct 20, 2007 8:12 PM

It's not convenient for me to post that right now, because my ultra 10 is offline (for some reason the DNS never got set up properly, and creating an /etc/resolv.conf file isn't enough to get it going).
Anyway, you're correct, I can see that there is overlap with the cylinders.
During installation, I removed slice 7 from the table. However, under the covers the installer created a 'backup' partition (slice 2), which used the rest of the space (~74.5GB), so the installer didn't leave the space unused as I had expected. Strangely, the backup partition overlapped; it started at zero as the swap partition did, and it ended ~3000 cylinders beyond the root partition. I trusted the installer to be correct about things, and simply figured it was acceptible for multiple partitions to share a cylinder. So I deleted slice 2, and created slice 7 using the same boundaries as slice 2.
So next I'll have to remove the zfs pool, and shrink slice 7 so it goes from cylinder 258 to ~35425.
[UPDATE] It worked. Thanks Alex! When I ran zpool create tank c0t0d0s7, there was no error.
Edited by: MindFuq on Oct 22, 2007 8:15 PM

Adding drives to storage pool with same unique id

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