Server 2012 R2 tiered storage, is hardware RAID forbidden?

Question

Hi,
I am building a new server for customer. We have total of 7 pcs 1TB HDD and 2pcs of 240GB SSD.
Before 2012 R2 version I usually built:
2 pcs HDD 1TB RAID1 for HOST (OS)
4 pcs HDD 2TB RAID10 for "slow IO" virtual disks (AD, fileshares, etc.)
2 pcs SSD 200GB RAID1 for "high IO" virtual disks (SQL server etc.)
1 pc HDD 1TB HOT SPARE for HDDs
Using R2 tiered storage I would build:
2 pcs HDD 1TB RAID1 HOST (OS), still using HW RAID as I need to boot from this.
2.2GB storage spaces LUN (2 way parity) which is created from:
2 pcs SSD 200GB (FAST tier)
4 pcs HDD 1TB (STANDARD tier)
1 HDD 1TB (SPARE?)
Now with R2 fast tier feature I can leverage the SSDs better but I lose hotspare for HW RAID1 (not a huge issue but still a minus)
 I am also worried about the notification & detection of failures within storage spaces LUN. With HW RAID the controller takes care of checking the individual drives and smart status (predictive failures). Also notification is easy
to arrange (email etc.). Are there any similar methods in R2 at OS level? Of course if one drive drops out OS will detect that and notification is possible (somehow I assume). But what about checking smart status etc.?
I thought also about the following configuration:
2 pcs HDD 1TB RAID1 HOST (OS), HW RAID
2.2GB storage spaces LUN (no parity) which is created from:
SSD 200GB (FAST tier, actually 2 pcs HW RAID1), looks like single disk
HDD 2TB (STANDARD tier, actually 4 pcs HW RAID10), looks like single disk
OS would think that this LUN is not protected but under the hood disk failures and checkups would be handled by the HW RAID controller in usual manner. And 1TB hot spare would span the 1TB R1 (HOST) + 2TB R10 ("slow" virtual
disk space). I wonder what could go wrong with this setup :-) I believe this is not supported setup?
I look forward to any opinions if you had the stamina read all this.
BR,
Markku

Answer 1

Hi Markku,
To check smart status, you can start a Windows powershell in
Server 2012 R2, run the cmdlet Get-PhysicalDisk –FriendlyName PhysicalDisk1 | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter
in powershell, which can get the relevant property of the PhysicalDisk1 like the temperature, experienced any sort of read or write failures etc.
For more detailed information of Get-StorageReliabilityCounter, please check this article:
Determining disk health using Windows PowerShell on Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/san/archive/2012/09/26/determining-disk-health-using-windows-powershell.aspx
In addition, To get information of your storage pool and disk, you can start with these cmdlets in powershell:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848705.aspx
I hope this helps.