ISCSI shared virtual disk

Hey,
I had on my synology a iSCSI Lun created. Now I connect this iSCSI lun with my Windows Server 2012R2. Create on this connection a VHDX virtual harddisk.
When I try to ad this vhdx file to an VM as shared disk I become the error that the storage is not the right for shared virtual disk.
Thanks for help
Stefan
It does not work this way... Making long story short you need to connect to LUN, create CSV on top of it and create shared VHDX there. For details see:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/storageserver/archive/2013/11/25/shared-vhdx-files-my-favorite-new-feature-in-windows-server-2012-r2.aspx
http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=14936
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn265980.aspx
Hope this helped! 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.

Similar Messages

OVM 3.1.1 shared virtual disk

Hi All,
Is it possible to configure shared virtual disk in OVS 3.1.1 as it was in OVS 2.x ?
Thanks in advance

Well, I haven't used MS cluster, but I'd think it should work, since the same disk is presented to each VM it is attached to and it is absolutely transparent to the guests where this disk comes from. All that the guests are seeing is the same device, where they all can operate on at the same time.

OVS 2.2 Shared Virtual Disk

I have created a Shared Virtual Disk and created a filesystem on it via one of my VMs. I have also mounted it on another VM. Anything that VM#1 creates on the shared disk can't be seen by VM#2 and vice-versa. Is this the way the shared disk is supposed to work?

ratdude wrote:
I have created a Shared Virtual Disk and created a filesystem on it via one of my VMs. I have also mounted it on another VM. Anything that VM#1 creates on the shared disk can't be seen by VM#2 and vice-versa. Is this the way the shared disk is supposed to work?You have to run a clustered filesystem like OCFS2 on both machines for changes to be visible on all nodes at the same time. Just having the disk shared is not enough. This is exactly the same as connecting two physical machines to the same hard drive. :)

Shared Virtual Disk

When creating a virtual shared disk oracle VM Manager -> Resources -> Shared Virtual Disks the only option you have are
Virtual Disk Name:
Virtual Disk Size:
Server Pool name:
Group Name:
Description:
My question is how do you know what this virtual disk is mapped to? i.e. SAN, NFS, LOCAL DISK?
Also how do you specific what disk to use ideally I would like the virtual disk to use a 150GB LUN from my SAN?

With the exception of multipath devices (and plain files obviously), there is no user interface for other kinds of devices for back end storage for DomUs, but Xen supports them. You have to edit the config yourself. They are in /OVS/running_pool/<name>/vm.cfg
Look for the disk = line and edit it to something like this:
disk = [
'phy:/dev/DomUDisk2/LVOracleApp,xvda,w',
In this case, I used a local LVM logical volume as back end storage (/dev/DumUDisk2) and I mapped it to the paravirtual device in the vm (xvda). You have to do something similar. I don't have a SAN/HBAs, but assuming your LUN shows up on Dom0 as /dev/sda, you might give a try to something like:
disk = ['file:/OVS/running_pool/myvm/System.img,hda,w', # or whater you want to do for the boot/root disk
*'phy:/dev/sda,xvda,w',* ]
Once this works, you might want to configure multipath if your hardware supports it.
Best of luck, keep us posted.

Shared virtual disks and linux installation

Dear all,
when i add some shared virtual disk to the virtual machine and start the instsallation of oracle linux i face a major performance issue and the system takes a long time to boot and linux cd's and start the instsallation process, i don't know why this issue is happening to me but it is giving me alot of troubes. i had to buy a new machine with husge configuration to try oracle VM and i feel like i bought for no benifits at all
your help will be appreciated/

Avi,
Actually, if you have one server HA would do nothing for you. You need at least two servers for HA to be useful.
Also I would believe that since you only have one 500 gig drive I am sure it is a sata drive that you are using. That drive is running your Dom0 plus all other DomU's. The shared drive is a file on the filesystem under the /OVS directory your DomU system drive is a file on the /OVS filesystem. While your experience is still a little odd it would run but be really slow. You say that without the shared drive it runs OK so my first thought would be to drop the shared disk and recreate it since it sounds like you have nothing on it at this point in time anyway.
Could be that the file for the shared disk became corrupt with something else you had done.

Cannot see more than one shared virtual disk at a time

I have multiple virtual disks configured and as I add them to the specific virtual machine im using it modifies the vm.cfg as follows:
disk = ['file:/OVS/running_pool/110_openfiler/System.img,hda,w',
',hdc:cdrom,r',
'file:/OVS/sharedDisk/openfiler-ocs-u01.img,hdd,w!',
'file:/OVS/sharedDisk/openfiler-ocs-u02.img,hde,w!',
'file:/OVS/sharedDisk/openfiler-SAN-test.img,hdf,w!',
when the machine boots up the contents of /dev only contains the shared drive hdd, thus I cannot see hde or hdf.
One thing I tried was to edit the vm.cfg after adding the shared drives to the machine to mimic:
disk = ['file:/OVS/running_pool/110_openfiler/System.img,hda,w',
',hdc:cdrom,r',
'file:/OVS/sharedDisk/openfiler-ocs-u01.img,sda,w!',
'file:/OVS/sharedDisk/openfiler-ocs-u02.img,sdb,w!',
'file:/OVS/sharedDisk/openfiler-SAN-test.img,sdc,w!',
This allows me to see all three drives when I issue fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 105.2 GB, 105226698752 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12793 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 12539 100615095 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 12540 12793 2040255 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/sda: 20.9 GB, 20971520512 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2549 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 2550 20480000 ee EFI GPT
Disk /dev/sdb: 20.9 GB, 20972569088 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2549 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 2550 20481024 ee EFI GPT
Disk /dev/sdc: 104.8 GB, 104857600512 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12748 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 12749 102400000 ee EFI GPT
but then my question becomes... could this cause any potential problems?

I found that there are 4 IDE disks and 7 SCSI disks at most for HVM guest on Oracle VM 2.1 version. For IDE disks, The available disknames are from hda to hdd; and for SCSI disks, are from sda to sdg. you may make test about it. :)
Message was edited by:
Changhai

Can not import Share virtual disk

I'm using ocfs2 filesystem
to creating a virtual shared disk oracle VM Manager -> Resources -> Shared Virtual Disks
Server Pool name: mypool
Group Name:
Virtual Disk Name: sharedisk
Virtual Disk Size: 5000
Description:
Can not selected Share virtual disk files which is null when import.what is error?
thank

Hi,
please clarify your error a little bit more.
a.) Did the create work correctly? Or did you get an error? If yes what error?
b.) Did you have problems attaching the Shared Disk to the VM?
Sebastian

Iscsi virtual disk wizard shows no servers (and no volumes)

Hi, in windows 2012 DataCenter, I installed the Iscsi target role and went on to set an iscsi disk.
but when launching "new Iscsi virtual disk" wizard (Server Manager\File and Storage Services\iSCSI -> new iscsi virtual disk)
I see no servers in list (upper windows) and instead it just states "no eligible servers are available".
it happens on both of my servers.. not just one..
anyone has any idea?

Sorry, I'm I little bit confused.
Let me explain my intentions:
I have 2 servers (hosts) but no NAS. at first I've configured a Hyper-v replica between 2 VMs - which has worked perfectly. then, I wanted to automate the procedure of the failover from the primary VM to its replica.
I realized that for that I need to use the cluster features.
now, since a cluster demands the VMs to reside on shared storage, I thought I'll trick it into thinking that the storage is shared while it's really local. (that is what the "Iscsi target server" is for right? sharing a portion of the local disk to seem as
connected via Iscsi).
anyway, maybe my thinking is wrong, or maybe there is a different way to do that, but all I really need is for the replica failover process to be automated.
Thanks again, Gil.

Error (23317) The operation Change properties of virtual machine is not permitted on a virtual machine that has shared virtual hard disks. Recommended Action The operation Change properties of virtual machine is not permitted on a virtual machine that h

Experts !
Error (23317)
The operation Change properties of virtual machine is not permitted on a virtual machine that has shared virtual hard disks.
Recommended Action
The operation Change properties of virtual machine is not permitted on a virtual machine that has shared virtual hard disks.
Is this limitation by design? If we have a shared VHDX between two VMs, then I am not able to change the VM properties from SCVMM.
SCVMM 2012 R2 with Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V.
Appreciate any help !
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
InsideVirtualization.com

Hello,
that is a VMM issue.
If you did not deploy your virtual cluster from a VMM service template, VMM doesn't recognize the configuration.
Until MS got it fixed, you could use the workaround from system center central:
http://www.systemcentercentral.com/tag/shared-vhdx/
This posting is provided >AS IS< with no warranties.

Cluster Quorum Disk failing inside Guest cluster VMs in Hyper-V Cluster using Virtual Disk Sharing Windows Server 2012 R2

Hi, I'm having a problem in a VM Guest cluster using Windows Server 2012 R2 and virtual disk sharing enabled.
It's a SQL 2012 cluster, which has around 10 vhdx disks shared this way. all the VHDX files are inside LUNs on a SAN. These LUNs are presented to all clustered members of the Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V cluster, via Cluster Shared Volumes.
Yesterday happened a very strange problem, both the Quorum Disk and the DTC disks got the information completetly erased. The vhdx disks themselves where there, but the info inside was gone.
The SQL admin had to recreated both disks, but now we don't know if this issue was related to the virtualization platform or another event inside the cluster itself.
Right now I'm seen this errors on one of the VM Guest:
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-FailoverClustering
Date: 3/4/2014 11:54:55 AM
Event ID: 1069
Task Category: Resource Control Manager
Level: Error
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: ServerDB02.domain.com
Description:
Cluster resource 'Quorum-HDD' of type 'Physical Disk' in clustered role 'Cluster Group' failed.
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.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-FailoverClustering" Guid="{BAF908EA-3421-4CA9-9B84-6689B8C6F85F}" />
<EventID>1069</EventID>
<Version>1</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>3</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2014-03-04T17:54:55.498842300Z" />
<EventRecordID>14140</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="1684" ThreadID="2180" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>ServerDB02.domain.com</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="ResourceName">Quorum-HDD</Data>
<Data Name="ResourceGroup">Cluster Group</Data>
<Data Name="ResTypeDll">Physical Disk</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-FailoverClustering
Date: 3/4/2014 11:54:55 AM
Event ID: 1558
Task Category: Quorum Manager
Level: Warning
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: ServerDB02.domain.com
Description:
The cluster service detected a problem with the witness resource. The witness resource will be failed over to another node within the cluster in an attempt to reestablish access to cluster configuration data.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-FailoverClustering" Guid="{BAF908EA-3421-4CA9-9B84-6689B8C6F85F}" />
<EventID>1558</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>3</Level>
<Task>42</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2014-03-04T17:54:55.498842300Z" />
<EventRecordID>14139</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="1684" ThreadID="2180" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>ServerDB02.domain.com</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="NodeName">ServerDB02</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
We don't know if this can happen again, what if this happens on disk with data?! We don't know if this is related to the virtual disk sharing technology or anything related to virtualization, but I'm asking here to find out if it is a possibility.
Any ideas are appreciated.
Thanks.
Eduardo Rojas

Hi,
Please refer to the following link:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2013/03/21/virtual-machine-guest-clustering-with-windows-server-2012-become-a-virtualization-expert-in-20-days-part-14-of-20.aspx#.Ux172HnxtNA
Best Regards,
Vincent Wu
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Server 2012 R2 iSCSI Target - Multiple targets per iSCSI Virtual Disk with CHAP

Scenario I am trying to achieve is this:
Windows Server 2012 R2 serves as iSCSI Target configured to have 1 iSCSI Virtual Disk
2 Hyper-V servers connecting to this target with iSCSI Inistator and have multiple targets for that iSCSI Virtual Disk using CHAP
**These 2 are nodes in fail over cluster, this iSCSI is added as a CSV.
Issue that I have, is that you can only have 1 target per iSCSI Virtual Disk
Both Hyper-V servers can connect to this LUN without issue when I add both initiator IDs to the target, but once I enable CHAP, you can only put one initiator ID in the "Name" field, so I can only connect from 1 Hyper-V server.
Do you know of a way around this?

From my understanding, "chaptest" is a single target, my goal was to make 2 targets to the same iSCSI virtual disk.
So if you were to right click the iSCSI virtual disk that "chaptest" is assigned to and click "Assign iSCSI Veritual Disk...", then select "New iSCSI Target, and proceed with the wizard it removes the "chaptest" target
and adds the new one just created.
My goal was to have 2 targets to 1 iSCSI VD, but seeing your screenshot, with 2 initiators connected, that goal doesn't seem needed anymore.
I was under the impression that the "User name" = the iscsi initiator IQN name, which had to be unique. That is why I thought I would need 2 targets.
Thanks

The storage where the virtual hard disk is located does not support virtual disk sharing

Hi everyone,
I deployed 2 hyper v vitual machines a while ago, and i did that because I needed to test my current game Project, which is an
online game. However, i've had some problems with my Windows installation then I had to reset the pc by making it a refresh
install. I still have the hyper v virtual disks, but i cannot attach it to a new hyper-v virtual machine. it pops up this message:
"the storage
where the virtual hard disk is located does not support virtual disk sharing". I dont know anything about virtual machines, so I
didnt know I had to make the disk sharable. How can I force to attach the hard disk to a new hyper-v? I dont want to go t
hrough the whole proccess of installing the operating system all over again and updating it....
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Romulo Romero

Hi MrDebugging,
>>
When I Try to add a SCSI Controller, and then I click browse to add a UNC I get this:
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual hard disks\ClienMachine.vhdx
but I tried placing in different location, and the same problem occurs!
By the way, Im not on a server , I am a domestic user and I am running it on my
Windows 8.1
According to the error message , it seems that it is not a permission issue .
The VM is Gen 1 or Gen2 ?
Generally the error message occurs when you enable "shared vhdx" on standalone/client hyper-v host :
Please try to attach the VHDx file to IDE controller if it is a Gen 1 virtual machine (because only the SCSI controller has the option "virtual hard disk sharing" and Gen 1 VM only can boot from IDE )
All in all , please do not use this feature without CSV or Scale-Out File Server with SMB 3.0 on file-based storage .
If it is not the case , please detail steps what you did .
Best Regards,
Elton Ji
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Server 2012 - iSCSI Virtual Disks Missing After Reboot

Hi guys. I recently had to reboot my Windows 2012 Storage Server. When it came up, the physical disks that the iSCSI virtual
disks reside on were visible, as were the VHD files, but the targets were gone. I looked in the File and Storage Services -> iSCSI but it says 'There are no iSCSI virtual disks', even though the VHD files are clearly there. When I try to import
the already existing ones, it gives me an error because that file already exists in the place I want to put it. These are very large VHD files so moving them to other storage and then re-importing them could take days, if not longer.
The iSCSI targets are still visible under 'View All Targets', but they are no longer associated with their VHD files. How do I reassociate
them? And why did the list of VHD files in File & Storage Services->iSCSI disappear in the first place!?
Thanks for any help!
-Warren

Hi guys. I recently had to reboot my Windows 2012 Storage Server. When it came up, the physical disks that the iSCSI
virtual disks reside on were visible, as were the VHD files, but the targets were gone. I looked in the File and Storage Services -> iSCSI but it says 'There are no iSCSI virtual disks', even though the VHD files are clearly there. When I try
to import the already existing ones, it gives me an error because that file already exists in the place I want to put it. These are very large VHD files so moving them to other storage and then re-importing them could take days, if not longer.
The iSCSI targets are still visible under 'View All Targets', but they are no longer associated with their VHD files. How do I reassociate
them? And why did the list of VHD files in File & Storage Services->iSCSI disappear in the first place!?
Thanks for any help!
-Warren
Replying to this question to answer it with a working solution. I'm not sure what the other replies marked as answers to this post are trying to answer, but they are completely unrelated to this topic. It appears they are describing a fix for a server acting
on the initiator side connecting to a target, not a server acting as an iSCSI target hosting LUNs. Very frustrating to say the least.
I ran into this problem over a weekend maintenance project where I rebooted a Server 2012 R2 File Server to enable some updates. When I logged back in, the iSCSI section was blank and my two existing iSCSI virtual disks had vanish. Now with that said the
underlying file system that the VHDX files were located on was intact. I tried to import them and got the same error that the path was already in use.
I first tried the fix mentioned lower in this thread where you move the VHDX file into another folder to change the path. That worked, but I wanted to figure out exactly why it broke and get my old file to load as it should. Now I don't know the answer to
"why" but I found a way to clear the existing information stored that is preventing you from re-mounting the existing iSCSI files without changing the path.
From this page, there are PowerShell scripts outlined to change iSCSI parameters from the command line.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2012/06/08/iscsi-target-cmdlet-reference.aspx
This command in particular deletes the record of unassigned virtual disks that aren't assigned to a target:
$AllDisks | where {$AssignedDisks -notcontains $_} |
foreach {Remove-IscsiVirtualDisk $_ }
After running that command that broken link that had existed prior was removed and I was able to re-mount my iSCSI virtual disks without that error coming up.
As always, make sure you have a backup before you try any odd powershell commands. That one worked for me.

There is no more space for virtual disk ServerName_2.vmdk. You might be able to continue this session by freeing disk space on the relevant volume, and clicking Retry. Click Cancel to terminate this session.   Time: 30/05/2014 1:16:20 AM

Recently, our mail server crashed at about 7pm one night, with the error 'There is no more space for virtual disk ServerName_2.vmdk. You might be able to continue this session by freeing disk space on the relevant volume, and clicking Retry. Click Cancel to terminate this session.'
When we click Retry, the server starts up OK.
There are no snapshots listed in Snapshot manager for any of the virtual machines on the host.
There is also free disk space available on the host and for the VM with the disk errors.
This happened at least three more times, often at bad times. Each time, we were able to click 'Retry' and the disk/system would allow the VM to start-up successfully.
I checked the Forums, the VMware support articles and the internet as I had not seen this problem before. I have completed the VSphere 5.1 - Fast Track course and this issue was NOT covered in the training.
Most of the advice on-line and even that on the VMware web-site was pointing to snapshots being the cause of this issue. There are no snapshots enabled and I cannot see evidence of snapshots ever being used.
- We are running VMware vsphere (5.1.0) and there are (were) 4 virtual machines running on the ESX host. We are using the free version of VMware/ESXi.
- The Hard disk types we are using for this Virtual Machine are 'Thin Provisioned'.
- There are 4 [Thin Provisioned] Hard Disks for this virtual machine.
- There are 6 CPUs
- There is 20GB of RAM (memory)
- The VM is running Windows Server 2008 R2 as the guest/VM operating system. It is an Exchange 2010 SP1 mail server. There is plenty of available disk space on all the drives. The [Exchange] log files are cleaned out regularly (automated).
I decided to move one of our non-critical servers off this host and on to another host to see if this helped the problem. This took quite some time, as we are not using HA or vmotion, nor do we have VCenter Server...nonetheless, I finally managed to get the non-critical server on to another host (n.b. This was a much smaller machine with less virtual resources assigned to it).
After moving the non-critical server off this host, we decided to monitor the Host and see if the issue resolved itself.
I checked the host about 6-10 times a day, from first thing in the morning till last thing at night - monitoring the performance of not only the Virtual Machine, but the ESXi host also.
There were no adverse performance issues. The only thing I did note, was in the Summary page on the ESX Host, under Storage, was If I right-clicked on the datastore and clicked refresh, then the free disk space would drop (ie from 140GB to 125GB).
After monitoring the host and VM for about 2 weeks, we did NOT have another instance of the above error.
Sorry for the long winded post, but I wanted to give as much detail given this error has been raised before and snapshots are usually blamed as the cause.
My question is this:
If the ESX host had plenty of available disk capacity and there were no snapshots enabled on the VM (or any other VM's on the same host), then why did our Virtual machine crash with the error that 'there is not more space for virtual disk Servername_2.vmdk'?
How do we prevent this issue from happening if we don't know the underlying cause?
I would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestions.
If I have not provided enough info on the specs or environment, please let me know and I will provide more information.
Thanks all,
Kurt

The type of storage is really based on your requirements, and your ability to withstand downtime.
iSCSI as you are using with a NAS such as Synology or QNAP. NAS Selector - Support - Synology - Network Attached Storage (NAS)
I wouldn't use iSCSI for Exchange or any database. It's a bit slow.
Do you have a single physical host? Then I'd probably to an external direct attached storage. This would be a card inserted in your host server that gives you multilane SAS/SATA connectivity (www.techcable.com/SAS-SATA/SAS-SATA.pps) and an external disk enclosure/array.
For multiple hosts to a single array, I recommend a fibre channel connection to a FC capable switch, and on to a FC connected array.
We used to use a HP P2000 (on old G1), but it's since been retired. Worked pretty well once firmware was upgraded. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/disk-storage/product-detail.html?oid=4118559#!tab=features. They can be connected via iSCSI, Fibre Channel or 6GB SAS so they are flexible and reasonably priced.
Recommendations:
     Use RAID 6 with your large disk arrays. With large disks there is a measurable failure rate when rebuilding a failed RAID5 array based on MTBF.
     Use smaller 15K disks in RAID 0+1 for speed on databases/Exchange.
     Use slower 7.2K disks in RAID6 for file storage.
We are a small hospital and we have 3 VMware servers with dual CNA (FC and Ethernet in a single twinax cable) connections to 2 redundant Cisco Nexus 5K switches and then 4 Fibre Channel connections to an EMC VNX 5300. It's extremely fast with about 50 virtual servers, but was quite an investment. One thing we don't have to worry about is down time. If there ever is an equipment failure, we have redundant everything, including power split between two UPSs.
Our VNX has 3 tiers of performance. 3 100GB SSD "Fast Cache" in RAID 1 with hot spare, to keep the most used data ready, but it's not really a tier, however one could be built utilizing the same disks. A second tier is performance tier with a 8 600GB RAID 0+1 and hot spare. The third is a bunch of 7.2K 3TB disks in RAID6. The VNX autotiers, placing data on disks depending on where it's needed. The volumes are sliced and diced automatically in the background to make this happen and we never have to touch it. I used a demo of Solarwinds Storage Manager to monitor performance for a while and the utilization was always low, meaning all data access was fast, througout the day.
D

Can Windows Server Backup spread a single backup job across multiple disks if they are not set up as a virtual disk?

This may be a dumb question, but I can't seem to find any definitive information after having done many, many searches. Short question is - can Windows Server Backup spread a single backup job across multiple disks if they are not in a storage
pool or some other RAID/JBOD structure?
Background:
I'm running Server 2012 Essentials with all Windows Updates installed. I have been backing up approx 2.8TB of data (Bare Metal Recovery, C:, S: (shared folders), and system reserved) for the past year+ onto a storage pool made up of two-2TB external
USB drives. Backup is slow (takes approx 1.5 days to complete), but generally works. Not surprisingly I was constantly getting capacity low messages so I decided to increase my backup storage pool by adding a 3TB drive and another spare 750GB drive
for a total of 7.75TB. Instead of having four separate external USB enclosures, I bot a 4-bay enclosure - Startech.com model #S3540BU33E to simplify this (or so I thought!).
The first problem I had was adding the two new drives to the existing storage pool. I think that is because the Startech uses a JMicron USB controller that reports identical uniqueid's for all drives so only one shows up in the GUI interface for creating storage
pools. After doing research on this, I set up a new storage pool and virtual disk using all four drives via Powershell and thought I was good. However, when the backup ran, it failed after filling the first drive, saying there was no remaining capacity. In
reality there were three remaining empty drives and there storage pool reported almost 5TB of avail capacity. I assumed this was due to the identical uniqueid issue so I decided to try a different tactic.
Instead of using a storage pool that combines all four disks into one virtual disk, I just added each of them to Windows Server Backup as individual drives thinking it would manage them collectively. I.e., when a drive filled up during a particular backup,
it would just start using the next drive and so on. Apparently this was a foolish assumption because the backup failed again as soon as the first disk filled up.
So now I don't know if this is still an issue with the identical uniqueid's or if Server Backup actually can't spread a single backup across multiple individual drives that aren't in a pool or other virtual disk implementation. Hence, my original question.
My guess is that it does *not* spread them across individual disks, but I just wanted to get confirmation.
Thanks

Mandy,
Thank you for following up on my question.
Unfortunately the article you referenced doesn't address what I am trying to accomplish.
The article focuses on saving the same backup job to multiple disks and rotating the disks between on and offsite for enhanced protection. However, it still requires that an individual backup job fits on a single disk.
What I am trying to determine is if a single backup job can span across more than one physical disk (during the backup process) without those physical disks being in some type of virtual disk implementation (e.g., storage pool, RAID, etc.).
Thanks,
Gerry

ISCSI shared virtual disk

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