Creating multiple storage pools on a 7110

Just received our first 7110 and so far it seems great. We are planning on using this device for database storage (MS SQL Server) and as such wanted to configure 2 storage pools, however through the config UI I cannot figure out how to make that happen. Is is possible on a 7110 to have multiple storage pools carved out of the base device? I've read docs where it appears if we add an additional JBOD we can make that happen but can't find anything related to the base device. If someone could point me in the right direction that would be great.

The 7110 only supports one storage pool and you are not able to add additional storage to the 7110 platform at current release. You are able to create two pools with a 7410. Most of the time you are thinking in terms of older storage where you have to define the raid sets - its a little different with this as ZFS provides the magic. I think if you set it up and start to play you will see the preformance - the 7210 you can also start to add SSD if needed.

Similar Messages

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.

Creating Multiple Server Pools

Hi All,
I have Installed Oracle VM Server 2.2 and Configured HA as well as Installed Oracle Database. Everything is working fine so far.
I have two Partitions from iSCSI and mounted to both the servers(/dev/sdb,/dev/sdc). I have used /dev/sdb to Configure HA and Installed Oracle 11g.
Now I like to Create Second Serverpool on Second VM Server to create test instance on Second Partition(/dev/sdc). Is it possible...?
Will it overwrite the existing /OVS if i crested the Second Serverpool without Cluster since /OVS was mounted to both the servers as part of configure Clustering.
Please could anyone advice me...
Thanks in Advance....

A server can be a member of only one pool. You will have to delete the second server from the first pool, and add it to the new pool. You can select /dev/sdc on that server as the root repository. Since both servers are now in different pools, you will need to disable HA for the first pool.
Edited by: herb on Apr 12, 2010 3:31 PM

How to create a local, non-clustered storage pool

Hello,
I have setup a two-node Failover Cluster, with a shared SAS DAS. So far so good.
One of the nodes also has internal disks that I wish to use for system backups.
This storage pool should not be clustered, as the disks cannot be seen from the other node. The trouble is that as soon as I create the pool it gets added to the cluster (in failed state).
In fact, the "Storage Pools" window in the server manager will only show me the "clustered storage spaces", with my internal disks in the Primordial pool.
Get-StorageSubSystem will show me both subsystems (Clustered Storage Space on ... + Storage Spaces on node-1) but fails to create a storage pool on the "local" subsystem.
How can I create a local, non clustered storage pool on internal disks ?
Cheers
alex

Hi,
SpackTime_ is right, the DA storage usually for the localdata backup, but if you want to use for remote computer backup, you can share a floder then you can storage your backup, but also that backup won't work the shared computer crash.
The simlar thread:
Schedule Backup to Remote Shared Folder
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/726d3765-5f82-4590-b970-d45e17412281/schedule-backup-to-remote-shared-folder?forum=winserverfiles
Hope this helps.
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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

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

Failover cluster storage pool cannot be added

Hi.
Environment: Windows Server 2012 R2 with Update.
Storage: Dell MD3600F
I created an LUN with 5GB space and map it to both node of this cluster. It can be seen on both side on Disk Management. I installed it as GPT based disk without any partition.
The New Storage Pool wizard can be finished by selecting this disk without any error message, nor event logs.
But after that, the pool will not be visible from Pools and the LUN will be gone from Disk Management. The LUN cannot be shown again even after rescanning.
This can be repo many times.
In the same environment, many LUNs work well in Storage - Disks. It just failed while acting as a pool.
What's wrong here?
Thanks.

Hi EternalSnow,
Please refer to following article to create clustered storage pool :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2012/06/02/10314262.aspx
Any further information please feel free to let us know .
Best Regards,
Elton Ji
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New-virtualdisk does not create tired storage, but gui does.

Hi
I'm trying to create a Storage Pool with a virtual disk with tierd storage.
Got 2 SSD and 2 HDD.
Created my pool and then I'm trying to create a disk using my ssd and hdd.
$ssd_tier = New-StorageTier -StoragePoolFriendlyName "SnabbPool" -FriendlyName SSD_Tier -MediaType SSD
$hdd_tier = New-StorageTier -StoragePoolFriendlyName "SnabbPool" -FriendlyName HDD_Tier -MediaType HDD
New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName "SnabbPool" -FriendlyName TierdDisk1 –StorageTiers @($ssd_tier, $hdd_tier) -StorageTierSizes @(110GB,2700GB) -ResiliencySettingName Mirror -WriteCacheSize 5GB -NumberOfColumns 1
The Disk gets created, but it's not tierd.
If a use the GUI i can create a tierd disk but then i only get 1GB of cache...and i want to do it with powershell.
Anyone seeing an error in mylines ?
One thing i think is wierd is that if i run a get-storagaTier after new-storagetier i get nothing returned.

Hi,
Do you mean that you cannot get any storage tier when you run Get-StorageTier command? Is there any error message in the Event Log? Please run the command “Get-Storagepool -FriendlyName SnabbPool | fl” and “Get-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName TierdDisk1| fl” and
post the commands output.
You could refer to the article below to monitor storage tier performance:
Monitor Storage Tiers Performance in Windows Server 2012 R2
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn789160.aspx
Best Regards,
Mandy
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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

Query about multiple connection pools under one database

Hi,
I have s query about connection pool, now we have a requirement,
we have two schemas in one db, some data store in one schema, some in another schema,
all tables are the same, but data is different, we want to retrive all data under two schemas,
so we need two connection pools under one database,
I have set two system DSN, and each connection pool was mapping to one DSN,
but after I importing tables into RPD, when I view data, there is a dialog let me select connection pool. so If this, when we drag columns in answer, it will definitely get wrong.
so how to realize this function about multiple connection pools under one database and we can get data normally.

Hi,
Try this step
1)Better to create two different DSN for the same database with different user id and password
2)now create multiple connection pool in the same database in u r RPD physical layer .
also refer this link : for imporving performance
http://obiee101.blogspot.com/2009/01/obiee-multiple-connection-pools.html
http://gerardnico.com/wiki/dat/obiee/connection_pool
Thanks
Deva

Migrating Protection group to new storage pool

Hello all running DPM 2012. The environment was setup prior to my arrival and it was setup with 10 1.5TB storage pools. I heard the thinking was this was the recommended size for storage pools. Problem is now we are/have run out of disk space
on those storage pools and jobs are failing with "DPM does not have sufficient storage space available on the recovery point volume to create new recovery points (ID 214)"
I have created new 4 new storage pools of 10TB each and I want to know how I can migrate the protection group data to the new storage pools and have the protection group use the new storage pool moving forward. I want to empty the smaller storage pools
so I can kill them off and create larger storage pools.
Unfortunately the GUI does not allow me to point to specific storage pools, it should, and I'm not familiar with DPM Shell commands.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Hi,
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd282970.aspx
The following commands can be used with the ntdisk number as seen in either the get-DPMDISK output, the Windows Disk Management GUI or DPM Management - Disks GUI. In my example disk-0 is the system/boot disk and not used by DPM storage pool.
EXAMPLE These commands show the migrations going from NTDisk 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 to NTDisks 11,12,13,14
$source = get-dpmdisk -dpmserver DPM-SVR-NAME | where {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 -contains $_.ntdiskid}
$source
$destination = get-dpmdisk -dpmserver DPM-SVR-NAME | where {11,12,13,14 -contains $_.ntdiskid}
$destination
Once you are satisfied the outputs are what you want, then run the following to do the migration:
MigrateDatasourceDataFromDPM.ps1 -DPMServername DPM-SVR-NAME -source $source -destination $destination
Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. Regards, Mike J. [MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Extend volume - Storage Pools - iSCSI - "Extend failed" // "Error extending volume: Size Not Supported"

Hi,
I've created a storage pools of 44x 1TB SAS, my storage pool name is "DAS" with 39.1TB (35.8 TB Free Space)
I have a virtual disk named "iSCSI_DFS", Simple, Thin, 20TB with 3.05 TB Allocated
I've created volumes on that disk, NTFS, Thin, Different size.
I create iSCSI VIRTUAL DISKS on those Volumes, same size (my volumes are full)
I want to "extend" my volumes size... I click on my volume, Extend Volume, enter a new size (current is 162GB so I enter 200 and select GB) and click OK
The Volume status turn to "Extend failed" with "Error extending volume: Size Not Supported"
Can you help? I need to change my volumes size...
Thx

I also could not get my partition to extend using the new Windows Server 2012 interface. Did you try to extend volume from the "computer management", "disk management" console? Get there from Administrator Tools - Computer Management. I
was able to extend my partition only from there. You need to first make sure you have available space on the disk. I had to delete an empty volume first before I was able to extend the partition. Hope this helps. Anthony :)
Thx !!
While in the Computer Management, I realised that my Disk was "Basic" and not "Dynamics", Extending using the Disk Management suggest to switch to Dynamics, and it's now working.
The error in the Server Manager should be "Unable to Extend : Your disk is Basic" or something like.
The Disk is a virtual disk on my Storage Pools.!!!

Creating Multiple LibrarySession (Connection Pool), Using single LibraryService

Hello,
I am trying to create multiple LibrarySession with a single LibraryService, so that each user can pick a new session from a pool and release LibrarySession back to the pool, when the user task is been completed.
Question.
1. Is it possible to create LibrarySession Pool ?
2. If yes, Can any one suggest, whether there will be any improvement in the performance of the application by doing so, or Oracle IFS internally handles the connection pool mechanism for LibrarySession.
3. Does Oracle IFS handle LibrarySession pool internally.
If there is any code, which does similar action, please do forward.
Best Regards
Sujeem Haries

Sujeem, we do not pool LibrarySession instances for you. You may see a performance improvement if you maintain a LibrarySession pool, depending on the application. See the following post for more info:
Oracle Security & PAM
Please note that although LibrarySession instances are not pooled for you, the underlying database connections are pooled.

OVM 3.0.3: Create new Server Pool but keep storage repositories?

Hi,
I think I have somewhat messed up my Server pool a bit, such as that there are some kind of network bridges in the server pool which I cannot get rid of, since OVMM insists that these have vnics associated to them, when none of my VMs had any nic configured.
So, I guess my only option is to re-create the server pool entirely and migrating VMs between server pools doesn't seem to be possible. I was wondering, I if could at least keep the storage repositories and get away with only creating a new server pool and adding the VM servers to the new pool, but keeping the VM files in the repositories. This will likely make this transition much more smooth, than having to copy all the VMs from the repositories onto a temporary storage and back into the new storage repositories.
Cheers,
budy

budachst wrote:
I think I have somewhat messed up my Server pool a bit, such as that there are some kind of network bridges in the server pool which I cannot get rid of, since OVMM insists that these have vnics associated to them, when none of my VMs had any nic configured.Usually this means you've imported templates or old VMs that still have those bridges configured. Check the network configuration of the templates installed into your repositories and change the bridges to real/proper ones. Once you've done that, you'll be able to delete the unusued bridges.
So, I guess my only option is to re-create the server pool entirely and migrating VMs between server pools doesn't seem to be possible. I was wondering, I if could at least keep the storage repositories and get away with only creating a new server pool and adding the VM servers to the new pool, but keeping the VM files in the repositories. This will likely make this transition much more smooth, than having to copy all the VMs from the repositories onto a temporary storage and back into the new storage repositories.Depends on how you've created the storage repositories: if they're OCFS2-based, they are stamped with the cluster ID of the pool to which they currently belong. It's possible to change this, but you need to contact Oracle Support to do so. I'd recommend first trying to unmap the existing bridges as described above.

Slow performance Storage pool.

We also encounter performance problems with storage pools.
The RC is somewhat faster than the CP version.
Hardware: Intel S1200BT (test) motherboard with LSI 9200-8e SAS 6Gb/s HBA connected to 12 ST91000640SS disks. Heavy problems with “Bursts”.
Using the ARC 1320IX-16 HBA card is somewhat faster and looks more stable (less bursts).
Inserting an ARC 1882X RAID card increases speed with a factor 5 – 10.
Hence hardware RAID on the same hardware is 5 – 10 times faster!
We noticed that the “Recourse Monitor” becomes unstable (irresponsive) while testing.
There are no heavy processor loads while testing.
JanV.
JanV

Based on some testing, I have several new pieces of information on this issue.
1. Performance limited by controller configuration.
First, I tracked down the underlying root cause of the performance problems I've been having. Two of my controller cards are RAIDCore PCI-X controllers, which I am using for 16x SATA connections. These have fantastic performance for physical disks
that are initialized with RAIDCore structures (so they can be used in arrays, or even as JBOD). They also support non-initialized disks in "Legacy" mode, which is what I've been using to pass-through the entire physical disk to SS. But for some reason, occasionally
(but not always) the performance on Server 2012 in Legacy mode is terrible - 8MB/sec read and write per disk. So this was not directly a SS issue.
So given my SS pools were built on top of disks, some of which were on the RAIDCore controllers in Legacy mode, on the prior configuration the performance of virtual disks was limited by some of the underlying disks having this poor performance. This may
also have caused the unresponsiveness the entire machine, if the Legacy mode operation had interrupt problems. So the first lesson is - check the entire physical disk stack, under the configuration you are using for SS first.
My solution is to use all RAIDCore-attached disks with the RAIDCore structures in place, and so the performance is more like 100MB/sec read and write per disk. The problems with this are (a) a limit of 8 arrays/JBOD groups to be presented to the OS (for
16 disks across two controllers, and (b) loss of a little capacity to RAIDCore structures.
However, the other advantage is the ability to group disks as JBOD or RAID0 before presenting them to SS, which provides better performance and efficiency due to limitations in SS.
Unfortunately, this goes against advice at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11382.storage-spaces-frequently-asked-questions-faq.aspx,
which says "RAID adapters, if used, must be in non-RAID mode with all RAID functionality disabled.". But it seems necessary for performance, at least on RAIDCore controllers.
2. SS/Virtual disk performance guidelines. Based on testing different configurations, I have the following suggestions for parity virtual disks:
(a) Use disks in SS pools in multiples of 8 disks. SS has a maximum of 8 columns for parity virtual disks. But it will use all disks in the pool to create the virtual disk. So if you have 14 disks in the pool, it will use all 14
disks with a rotating parity, but still with 8 columns (1 parity slab per 7 data slabs). Then, and unexpectedly, the write performance of this is a little worse than if you were just to use 8 disks. Also, the efficiency of being able to fully use different
sized disks is much higher with multiples of 8 disks in the pool.
I have 32 underlying disks but a maximum of 28 disks available to the OS (due to the 8 array limit for RAIDCore). But my best configuration for performance and efficiency is when using 24 disks in the pool.
(b) Use disks as similar sized as possible in the SS pool.
This is about the efficiency of being able to use all the space available. SS can use different sized disks with reasonable efficiency, but it can't fully use the last hundred GB of the pool with 8 columns - if there are different sized disks and there
are not a multiple of 8 disks in the pool. You can create a second virtual disk with fewer columns to soak up this remaining space. However, my solution to this has been to put my smaller disks on the RAIDCore controller, and group them as RAID0 (for equal
sized) or JBOD (for different sized) before presenting them to SS.
It would be better if SS could do this itself rather than needing a RAID controller to do this. e.g. you have 6x 2TB and 4x 1TB disks in the pool. Right now, SS will stripe 8 columns across all 10 disks (for the first 10TB /8*7), then 8 columns across 6
disks (for the remaining 6TB /8*7). But it would be higher performance and a more efficient use of space to stripe 8 columns across 8 disk groups, configured as 6x 2TB and 2x (1TB + 1TB JBOD).
(c) For maximum performance, use Windows to stripe different virtual disks across different pools of 8 disks each.
On my hardware, each SS parity virtual disk appears to be limited to 490MB/sec reads (70MB/sec/disk, up to 7 disks with 8 columns) and usually only 55MB/sec writes (regardless of the number of disks). If I use more disks - e.g. 16 disks, this limit is
still in place. But you can create two separate pools of 8 disks, create a virtual disk in each pool, and stripe them together in Disk Management. This then doubles the read and write performance to 980MB/sec read and 110MB/sec write.
It is a shame that SS does not parallelize the virtual disk access across multiple 8-column groups that are on different physical disks, and that you need work around this by striping virtual disks together. Effectively you are creating a RAID50 - a Windows
RAID0 of SS RAID5 disks. It would be better if SS could natively create and use a RAID50 for performance. There doesn't seem like any advantage not to do this, as with the 8 column limit SS is using 2/16 of the available disk space for parity anyhow.
You may pay a space efficiency penalty if you have unequal sized disks by going the striping route. SS's layout algorithm seems optimized for space efficiency, not performance. Though it would be even more efficient to have dynamic striping / variable column
width (like ZFS) on a single virtual disk, to fully be able to use the space at the end of the disks.
(d) Journal does not seem to add much performance. I tried a 14-disk configuration, both with and without dedicated journal disks. Read speed was unaffected (as expected), but write speed only increased slightly (from 48MB/sec to
54MB/sec). This was the same as what I got with a balanced 8-disk configuration. It may be that dedicated journal disks have more advantages under random writes. I am primarily interested in sequential read and write performance.
Also, the journal only seems to be used if it in on the pool before the virtual disk is created. It doesn't seem that journal disks are used for existing virtual disks if added to the pool after the virtual disk is created.
Final configuration
For my configuration, I have now configured my 32 underlying disks over 5 controllers (15 over 2x PCI-X RAIDCore BC4852, 13 over 2x PCIe Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, and 4 over motherboard SATA), as 24 disks presented to Windows. Some are grouped on my RAIDCore
card to get as close as possible to 1TB disks, given various limitations. I am optimizing for space efficiency and sequential write speed, which are the effective limits for use as a network file share.
So I have: 5x 1TB, 5x (500GB+500GB RAID0), (640GB+250GB JBOD), (3x250GB RAID0), and 12x 500GB. This gets me 366MB/sec reads (note - for some reason, this is worse than the 490MB/sec when just using 8 of disks in a virtual disk) and 76MB/sec write (better
than 55MB/sec on a 8-disk group). On space efficiency, I'm able to use all but 29GB in the pool in a single 14,266GB parity virtual disk.
I hope these results are interesting and helpful to others!

Creating multiple storage pools on a 7110

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