PX6-300D storage pool

Hello,
I have px6-300D nas with 3TB X 6 drives. I configured it with Raid 5. Few Days back it was showing a message The amount of free space on your 'Shares' volume is below 5% of capacity. and asked to overwrite Drive 6. So i ejected it after shutdown i put it back and started.It get started rebuilding than. At 43% it got stuck and showing red indication, It was also messaging that your storage pool failed. in web access it was messaging your storage pool has failed and above message also. I tried restart and all but nothing has worked. Then after i contacted customer care they told that your few drives (3 or 4) has failed. they asked for dump file. as i wasold firmware the dump file was not getting generated. so i upgraded firmware as per instuction. they conculed that your few hard drive has been failed and go with some data recovery solution provide. I really dont understand how would it corruprt my storage pool without any notice or mesage. If its NAS with raid protection my data must be protected. I really need my data back.
Till today i am receiving messaged like
The amount of free space on your 'Shares' volume is below 5% of capacity.
Data protection is being reconstructed on Storage Pool gstv. Reconstruction is 8% complete.
Reconstucting restarts at 45% starts with 0.
I wonder if reconstrcion is happeing how would my drives are failure.
Please help me ......
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Thanks for your reply Westly,
I wondered about data capacity of Lenovo px6-300D. I observed that it was showing that "The amount of free space on your 'Shares' volume is below 5% of capacity". After that it was getting hang few times. and fianlly raid got corrpted or HDD got faild. I have never faced any problem like this before In raid. I want to ask that Do i have a FIle systems can be storaged on another system so that I can recover if its get failed again. I mean I used to work with tyrone server with Fiber channel. It was getting mounted on windows system and shared thru SAN licences software. Is it possible that way? So i Can mount Lenovo EMC PX-6 300D volumes on a system and share it thru Windows PC. So that my file system and folder system would be safer. So that I will not have to go for costy data recovery service. Even I can try a free recovery softwares.
Please reply,
Thanks,

Similar Messages

There is 1 drive with existing data on your LenovoEMC px6-300d.

Hi,
on the display of my px6-300d there is an error: "There is 1 drive with existing data on your LenovoEMC px6-300d".
Firmware version is 4.0.8.23976.
When I logon to web page of the device and click on the error message, I can see Storage Pool SP1 with capacity of 10.84TB of which 10.84TB is available. Drive 1 is "shaded", drives 2-6 are "A"
However there are no volumes there...
In the event log I can see following events (logon events removed):
09/08/2014 7:40 pm  The device is starting up...
09/08/2014 7:37 pm userid Restart requested.
09/08/2014 7:33 pm  Storage verification completed.
09/08/2014 8:43 am userid Storage Pool 'SP1' has been modified.
09/08/2014 8:43 am userid Storage Pool 'SP1' has been added.
09/08/2014 8:43 am userid Verifying the state of storage.
09/08/2014 8:38 am  Data may be unavailable due to a failure.
09/08/2014 8:38 am  Storage verification completed.
09/08/2014 8:32 am  Verifying the state of storage.
09/08/2014 8:32 am  The device is starting up...
09/08/2014 8:29 am userid Restart requested.
09/08/2014 6:49 am  Data may be unavailable due to a failure.
09/08/2014 6:49 am  Storage verification completed.
09/08/2014 6:46 am  Drive number 1 encountered a recoverable error.
09/08/2014 6:42 am  Verifying the state of storage.
09/08/2014 6:42 am  Your LenovoEMC px6-300d was shut down improperly, which can cause your most recent changes to be lost.
09/08/2014 6:42 am  The device is starting up...
09/07/2014 10:11 am  Data may be unavailable due to a failure.
08/22/2014 7:54 am  Data is available, but a failure has been detected.
08/13/2014 1:53 am  Storage verification completed.
08/11/2014 9:15 pm  Verifying storage data protection.
I have spoken to an admin who reported this issue today in the morning. He has told me that he had spotted the problem on 7:03 am when one of virtual machines with a drive on px6 failed. He was waiting and on 8:29 am he restarted the device and after restart he started storage verification. When it finished (7:33 pm) he again restarted the device. There are no new error events in the event log, however I cannot see any data on the device.
When I click on drive 1 in Drive Management, I get a message "This drive contains existing data that must be overwritten before it can be used. Are you sure you want to overwrite the existing data?"
Does it mean that before RAID rebuild px6 requires approval to delete the drive with recoverable error (as seen on6:46 am in event log) and rebuild RAID? Should I click YES? I hope I will not loose the data.
Best regards,
Marcel

Hello vinaykumaar
I recommend that you power down the unit and swap the affected hard disk to another drive bay to see if that prevents the unit from restarting.
Then try allowing the unit to overwrite the specific drive. On a px unit this would be done via the storage pool information overview under drive management. On a ix unit you would go to Drive Management>Settings, check the "add disks to storage system..." then click apply. This will overwrite the disk marked by the green stripes.
If the above options do not help I recommend that you contact Lenovo Support in your region for further assistance.
LenovoEMC Contact Information is region specific. Please select the correct link then access the Contact Us at the top right:
US and Canada: https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/
Latin America and Mexico: https://lenovo-la-es.custhelp.com/
EU: https://lenovo-eu-en.custhelp.com/
India/Asia Pacific: https://lenovo-ap-en.custhelp.com/
http://support.lenovoemc.com/

LenovoEMC px6-300d Not Ready

Hello,
My Iomega stuct at 95%. after contacting support they told that plug lan cable after 75% complted. I did the same.
Now I face following problem:-
LenovoEMC px6-300d Not Ready Your device is in an inconsistent state because the original drives were replaced. You can either put the original drives back or perform a factory reset to erase all existing data and use the new drives. To perform a factory reset you must first clear the administrator password by pressing the reset button on the back of the device.

Hello Vishal83
With the device in this state, I recommend the following.
-power down the unit
-re-seat all disks
-power unit back on and allow to fully boot.
if you are still recieving the same alert, try the following
-power down the unit
-swap the disk in bay1 with another disk from bays 2-6 (ideally from the same storage pool, if you have multiple sp instead of just one)
-power unit back on and allow to fully boot
if the error is still present, you should contact support in your region, however data recovery may need to be considered and then the unit will need to be factory reset by following the alert's instructions.
LenovoEMC Contact Information is region specific. Please select the correct link then access the Contact Us at the top right:
US and Canada: https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/
Latin America and Mexico: https://lenovo-la-es.custhelp.com/
EU: https://lenovo-eu-en.custhelp.com/
India/Asia Pacific: https://lenovo-ap-en.custhelp.com/
http://support.lenovoemc.com/

Px6-300d raid types problem

Just bought new px6-300d and installed into it 4 WDC_WD40EFRX (WD Red 4Tb)
In "Add storage" area in "Protection" combo there are only RAID 5, RAID 10, RAID 0 and None. I need RAID 1 and JBOD and i guess px6 should support such types of RAIDs. So how i can enable RAID 1 and JBOD on px6?
P.S. Firmware is 4.0.8.23976
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Just for information
I selected 2 disks and RAID 10 option and NAS created it as RAID 1, what i actualy needed
So it works but it's not very clear behaviour

PX6-300d and new disk issues

Hello!
I have PX6-300d with 6 2TB disks installed. I'd like to replace them with 6 4 TB disks. To save all my data first time i tried to do hot replace 2 TB disk #6 with 4 TB disk. It didn't work cause I had repeating message about disk cleaning. I did clening pocedure with diskpart.exe but nothing changed. If I replace drives with PX6-300d shut down then PX6 doesn't start. So I removed all 6 2 TB disks and installed 1 4 TB disk. Device didn't load. I started PX6 with no disks and install 4 TB disk on working PX6. I received the same situation with repeating message about disk overwriting. My new 4 TB disk is Seagate ST4000VN000 and it should be compatible with PX6. I have last firmware version installed...
The question is: what's wrong or is there correct way to upgrade my PX6 from 2 TB disks to 4 TB disks?
Thank you very much for any useful information...
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi aketkov,
The device will ask you to overwrite any existing data when you install a new drive, even if there is not any data on the drive. You will need to allow the device to erase the disks to add them. Please follow the instruction procedure on the following support page: Upgrading the storage capacity for an Iomega network storage device
Have questions and need answers?
Search the database for answers to FAQ's, software/driver downloads, tutorials, news, features and more!
LenovoEMC Support & Downloads
LenovoEMC North America Support Contact Page

PX6-300D WD RE drives

So, I went out and I saw the supported drives for the PX family at https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/26012
The list looks like it hasn't been updated in a while as WD has dropped the RE2, RE3, RE4 (generation numbers) and now just call them the RE with no numbers behind it.
I was wondering if the WD RE 3TB drives, WD3000FYYZ will work and is it supported?

The latest firmware (Firmware Version 4.0.8.23976 for px6-300d) improves support for adding used or pre-formatted HDDs that are supported by LifeLine. If the HDD is not accepted, first try Cleaning a hard disk for use with an ix or px network storage device. If that does not work then I would recommend upgrading your firmware to the latest version.
Have questions and need answers?
Search the database for answers to FAQ's, software/driver downloads, tutorials, news, features and more!
LenovoEMC Support & Downloads
LenovoEMC North America Support Contact Page

StorCenter px6-300d stuck

This week I lost one of my 6 HDD in my StorCenter px6-300d. It just died because a Seagate Barracuda firmware bug.
First... I have warranty until 10/2015, but I am not able to solve this with Lenovo Support in Brazil. (BIG PROBLEM)
Second... To be sure that my data is more secure, I just brought a new HDD (same model than the lost one) and added it to my StorCenter px6-300d. I received a message that the new HDD should be "formated" to rebuild RAID. It has RAID 6 with total 6x 2Tb HDD. However, it is for 2 days working (white light blinking) and display shows 0% done. I am not able to access NAS web interface, or anything.
What I need to do? How to solve this? Thanx.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hello allmac
With the five orignal disks there is a sync in progress, I do not recommend disturbing it. The process should have about 24 hours to complete. Please check you logs at that time to see if any of the disks are logging errors. If they are not, try adding the replacement disk to the storage system again via drive management.
LenovoEMC Contact Information is region specific. Please select the correct link then access the Contact Us at the top right:
US and Canada: https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/
Latin America and Mexico: https://lenovo-la-es.custhelp.com/
EU: https://lenovo-eu-en.custhelp.com/
India/Asia Pacific: https://lenovo-ap-en.custhelp.com/
http://support.lenovoemc.com/

VirtualDisk on Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Pool stuck in "Warning: In Service" state and all file transfers to and from is awfully slow

Greetings,
I'm having some trouble with my Windows Storage Pool and my VirtualDisk running on a Windows Server 2012 R2 installation. It consists of 8x Western Digital RE-4 2TB drives + 2x Western Digital Black Edition 2TB drives and have been configured in a single-disk
parity setup and the virtual disk is running fixed provisioning (max size) and is formatted with ReFS.
It's been running solid for months besides some awful write-speeds at times, it seems like the write performance running ReFS compared to NTFS is not that good.
I was recommended to add SSD's for journalling in order to boost write-performance. Sadly I seemed to screw up this part, you need to due this through PowerShell and it needs to be done before creating the virtualdisk. I managed to add my SSD to the Storage
Pool and then remove it.
This seem to have caused some awkward issues, I'm not quite sure of why as the virtualdisk is "fixed" so adding the SSD to the Storage Pool shouldn't really do anything, right? But after I did this my virtual disk have been stuck in "Warning:
In Service" and it seems to be stuck? It's been 4-5 days and it's still the same and the performance is currently horrible. Moving 40GB of data off the virtual disk took me about 20 hours or so. Launching files under 1mb of the virtual disk takes several
minutes etc.. It's pretty much useless.
The GUI is not providing any useful information about what's going on. What does "Warning: In Service" actually imply? How am I supposed to know how long this is supposed to take? Running Get-Virtualdisk in PowerShell does not provide any useful
information either. I did try to do a repair through the Server Manager GUI but it goes to about 21% within 2-3 hours but drops back down to 10%. I have had the repair running for days but it wont go past 21% without dropping back down again.
Running repair through PowerShell yields the same results, but if I detach the virtual disk and then try to repair through PowerShell (the GUI wont let me do repair on detached virtual disks) it will just run for a split second and then close.
After doing some "Googeling" I've seen people mentioning that the repair is not able to finish unless I have at least the same amount of free space in the Storage Pool as the largest drive in my Storage Pool is housing so I added a 4TB drive as
due to me running fixed provisioning I had used all the space in the pool but the repair is still not able to go past 21%.
As am running "fixed provisioning" I guess adding a extra drive to the pool doesn't do much difference as it's not available for the virtual disk? So I went ahead and deleted 3 TB of data on the virtual disk so now I've got about 4 TB free space
on the virtual disk so there should be plenty of room for Windows Server 2012 R2 to re-build the parity or whatever it's trying to do but it's still the same, the repair wont move past 21% and the virtual disk is still stuck in "Warning: In Service"
mode and the performance keeps being horrible so taking a backup will take forever at these speeds...
Am I missing something here? All the drives in the pool is working fine. I have verified using various bootable tools so why is this happening and what can I do to get the virtual disk running at full state again? Why doesn't the GUI prompt you with any
kind of usable information?
Best regards, Thomas Andre

Hi,
Please run chkdsk /f /r command on the virtual disk to have a try. In the meantime, run the following commands in PowerShell to share the output.
get-virtualdisk -friendlyname <name> | get-physicaldisk | fl
get-virtualdisk -friendlyname <name> |fl
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]

After upgrading to 8.1 Pro from 8.0 Pro, my Storage Spaces and Storage Pool are all gone.

Under 8.0 I had three 4-terabyte drives set up as a Storage Pool in Storage Spaces. I had five storage-space drives using this pool I had
been using them for months with no problems. After upgrading to 8.1 ( which gave no errors ) the drives no longer exist. Going into "Storage Spaces" in the control panel, I do not see my existing storage pool or storage drives. I'm prompted
to create a new Pool and Storage Spaces. If I click the "Create Pool" it does not list the three drives I used previously as available to add.
Device Manager shows all three drives as present and OK.
Disk Management shows Disks 0,1,2,6. The gap in between 2 and 6 is where the 3,4,5 storage spaces drives were.
Nothing helpful in the event log or the services.
I've downloaded the ReclaiMe Storage Spaces recovery tool and it sees all of my logical drives with a "good" prognosis for recovery. I've not gone down that road yet though because it requires separate physical drives to copy everything to
and they want $299 for the privilege.
Does anyone have any ideas? I'm thinking of doing a fresh 8.1 install to another drive to see if it can see it or reinstalling 8.1 to the existing drive in the hope that it will just suddenly work. Or possibly going back to 8.0.
Thanks for your help!
Steve

Hi,
“For parity spaces you must backup your data and delete the parity spaces. At this point, you may upgrade or perform a clean install of Windows 8. After the upgrade or clean installation is complete, you may recreate parity spaces and
restore your data.”
I’d like to share the following article with you for reference:
Storage Spaces Frequently Asked Questions
(Pay attention to this part:How do I prepare Storage Spaces for upgrading from the Windows 8 Consumer Preview to Windows 8 Release Preview?)
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11382.storage-spaces-frequently-asked-questions-faq.aspx#How_do_I_prepare_Storage_Spaces_for_upgrading_from_the_Windows_8_Consumer_Preview_to_Windows_8_Release_Preview
Regards,
Yolanda
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.

Server 2012 R2 Storage Pool Disk Identification Method

Hi all,
I'm currently using Server 2012 R2 Essentials with a Storage Space consisting of 7 3TB disks. The disks are connected to an LSI MegaRAID controller which does not support JBOD so each disk is configured as a single disk RAID0. The disks are connected to
the controller using SAS Breakout Cables (SATA to SFF-8087).
I am considering moving my server into a new chassis. The new chassis has a SAS Backplane for drive attachment which means I would be re-cabling to use SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 cables instead and in doing so, the channel and port assignment on the LSI MegaRAID
will change.
I know that the LSI card will have no problem identifying the disk as the same disk when it's connected to a different port or channel on the controller, but is the same true for the Storage Space?
How does Storage Spaces track the identity of the individual disks?
Just to be clear, the hardware configuration otherwise will not be changing. Motherboard, CPU, RAID controller etc will all be the same, it will just be moving everything into a new chassis.

Hi,
If the disks are still recognized as the same, the storage space should be recognized as well.
You could test to do the replacement and see if the storage pools are being recognized. If not you can still change them back with original devices and storage pools will back to work. Then we may need to find a way to migrate your data. Personally I think
it will work directly.
Note: backup important files is always recommended.
If you have any feedback on our support, please send to [email protected]

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?

Win 8.1 Storage Pool not allowing "add drive" nor allow expand capacity

Have one Storage Space within one Storage Pool (Parity mode) containing 4 identical hard drives.
Used for data storage, it appears to be functioning normally
and
has filled 88% of capacity
(ie. 88% x 2/3 of physical capacity (parity mode))
The only other storage on this new PC is an SSD used for OS (win 8.1 pro) and application software.
In "Manage Storage Spaces"
displays this warning message to add drives:
< Warning >
< Low capacity; add 3 drives >
After clicking "add drives", it displays:
"No drives that work with Storage Spaces are available. Make sure that the drives that you want to use are connected.".
However I had connected another two identical hard drives via SATA cables and "Disk Management" displays these two drives available.
in summary:
"Manage Storage Spaces" does not find these drives as available although they show correctly in Disk Management.
btw - I removed the pre-existing partitioning on the 'new' drives so now they show only as "unallocated" in "Disk Management". (I did
likewise before Storage Pool found the 4 original drives)
Perhaps the problem is to increase the total nominal capacity of the Storage Space, before can add more drives?
Microsoft says that the capacity of Storage Pools can be increased but cannot be decreased -
but computer displays no Change "button" by which this can be done. There is supposed to be a "Change" button but that is
not displaying for me. So "Manage Storage Spaces" offer me no option to manage the "size" of the pool.
only five options are displayed:
Create a storage space (ie. from the small amount remaining unused in the Pool)
Add drives (.... as explained already)
Rename pool (only renames the storage space)
Format (ie. re-format and so lose all current data)
Delete (ie. delete the storage space and so lose all current data)
using Google, find nothing bearing on this problem
except the most basic instructions to set up a storage space!
Can you help?
The problem is that the Storage Pool is not displaying a "button" to increase capacity, and when click "add drives" finds no hard drives available.

Hi,
I would suggest you launch Device Manager, then expand
Disk drives. Right-click the disk listed as "Disk drive", and select
Uninstall. On the Action menu, click Scan for hardware changes to reinstall the disk.
Please also take a look of this link:
see this part: How do I increase pool capacity?
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11382.storage-spaces-frequently-asked-questions-faq.aspx#How_do_I_increase_pool_capacity
According to the link, to extend a parity space, the pool would need the appropriate number of columns available to accommodate the layout of the disk.
Yolanda Zhu
TechNet Community Support

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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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!

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

PX6-300D storage pool

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