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Scripts for creating an destroying Fault Tolerant multi-tier storage spaces on Windows 10

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Create Storage Spaces in Windows 10

Windows Server O/S contains Storage Spaces support for Server Spaces tiered storage. You can front slower spinning disks with smaller faster SSDs. Windows 10 has a Storage Spaces GUI Control Panel that does not include the tiered storage GUI. This means Powershell must be used for all configuration.

Physical Disks

This repository contains scripts that create tiered storage pools that integrate SSDs as caching drives and HDDs as storage drives. They assume you have at least one SSD and one HDD.

  • The scripts automatically find all raw drives and add them to the pool.
  • Some HDDs have their types incorrectly identified. The script can coerce them to be MediaType:HDD
  • The entire virtual drive is added to the system as a single large volume
  • You need at least
    • 1 SSD and 1 HDD to run cached storage / Simple resiliency
    • 2 SSD and 2 HDD to run cached storage / Mirror resiliency /
    • 1 SSD and 2 HDD to run cached storage / Simple resiliency / striped storage (sum of HDD space)

Simple Mirrored Mirrored and Striped

Scripts

new-storage-space.ps1

Creates a tiered storage pool and allocates all the disk space to a single drive

  • You can change the drive letter and label by editing the variables at the top.
  • the script can auto size the drive and cache. That didn't work for me so the script supports manual sizing.

remove-storage-space

Removes the virtual drive, the storage tiers and then the storage pool.

  • All drives are returned the Primordial pool

Sample configuration

new-storage-space.ps created a Virtual drive from 3 physical drives

Physical Drives Storage Space Virtual Drive
two 2TB HDD single 3.6TB data volume striped across my two HDD
one 200GB SSD. with a 200GB read/write cache

Simple resiliency with striped drives

Win 10 Pro Storage Spaces Control Panel

The control panel does not display or manipulate tiers

ResiliancyName: Simple vs Mirror

The "Mirror" resiliency level attempts to mirror both SSD and HDD tiers so you would need 4 drives run mirror, to mirror both tiers

Caching Impact Benchmark

All Storage Pool drives connected to 3Gb/s SATA. The write-back cache is not used with sequential writes over 256KB

[Read]                           *Single 2TB no cache*           *Two 2TB mirrored with 200GB cache*
Sequential 1MiB (Q=  8, T= 1):   160.497 MB/s [    153.1 IOPS]   282.983 MB/s [    269.9 IOPS]
Sequential 1MiB (Q=  1, T= 1):   156.766 MB/s [    149.5 IOPS]   254.605 MB/s [    242.8 IOPS]
    Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16):     1.748 MB/s [    426.8 IOPS]   175.272 MB/s [  42791.0 IOPS]
    Random 4KiB (Q=  1, T= 1):     0.527 MB/s [    128.7 IOPS]    21.189 MB/s [   5173.1 IOPS]

[Write]                          *Single 2TB no cache*           *Two 2TB mirrored with 200GB cache*
Sequential 1MiB (Q=  8, T= 1):   153.896 MB/s [    146.8 IOPS]   226.825 MB/s [    216.3 IOPS]
Sequential 1MiB (Q=  1, T= 1):   154.147 MB/s [    147.0 IOPS]   230.149 MB/s [    219.5 IOPS]
    Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16):     2.033 MB/s [    496.3 IOPS]   149.000 MB/s [  36377.0 IOPS]
    Random 4KiB (Q=  1, T= 1):     1.706 MB/s [    416.5 IOPS]    38.790 MB/s [   9470.2 IOPS]

Example state

Before script

Three drives can pool. The HDD drive media types are not recognized

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-PhysicalDisk
Number FriendlyName           SerialNumber         MediaType   CanPool OperationalStatus HealthStatus Usage            Size
------ ------------           ------------         ---------   ------- ----------------- ------------ -----            ----
0      SanDisk Ultra II 480GB xxxxxxxxxxxx         SSD         False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 447.13 GB
4      ATA WDC WD20EFRX-68A   WD-xxxxxxxxxxxx      Unspecified True    OK                Healthy      Auto-Select   1.82 TB
3      ATA WDC WD20EFRX-68A   WD-xxxxxxxxxxxx      Unspecified True    OK                Healthy      Auto-Select   1.82 TB
1      ATA KINGSTON SH103S3   xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx     SSD         False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 223.57 GB
2      ATA LITEONIT LCS-256   xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx SSD         True    OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 238.47 GB

After creating Virtual Drive

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-PhysicalDisk
Number FriendlyName           SerialNumber         MediaType CanPool OperationalStatus HealthStatus Usage            Size
------ ------------           ------------         --------- ------- ----------------- ------------ -----            ----
0      SanDisk Ultra II 480GB xxxxxxxxxxxx         SSD       False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 447.13 GB
4      ATA WDC WD20EFRX-68A   WD-xxxxxxxxxxxx      HDD       False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select   1.82 TB
3      ATA WDC WD20EFRX-68A   WD-xxxxxxxxxxxx      HDD       False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select   1.82 TB
1      ATA KINGSTON SH103S3   xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx     SSD       False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 223.57 GB
2      ATA LITEONIT LCS-256   xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx SSD       False   OK                Healthy      Auto-Select 238.47 GB

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-StoragePool
FriendlyName    OperationalStatus HealthStatus IsPrimordial IsReadOnly    Size AllocatedSize
------------    ----------------- ------------ ------------ ----------    ---- -------------
Primordial      OK                Healthy      True         False      4.53 TB       3.86 TB
My Storage Pool OK                Healthy      False        False      3.86 TB       3.66 TB

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-StorageTier
FriendlyName                  TierClass   MediaType ResiliencySettingName FaultDomainRedundancy    Size FootprintOnPool StorageEfficiency
------------                  ---------   --------- --------------------- ---------------------    ---- --------------- -----------------
SSDTier                       Unknown     SSD       Simple                0                        0 B             0 B
My Tiered VirtualDisk-HDDTier Capacity    HDD       Simple                0                     3.46 TB         3.46 TB           100.00%
My Tiered VirtualDisk-SSDTier Performance SSD       Simple                0                      211 GB          211 GB           100.00%
HDDTier                       Unknown     HDD       Simple                0                        0 B             0 B

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-VirtualDisk
FriendlyName          ResiliencySettingName FaultDomainRedundancy OperationalStatus HealthStatus    Size FootprintOnPool StorageEfficiency
------------          --------------------- --------------------- ----------------- ------------    ---- --------------- -----------------
My Tiered VirtualDisk                                             OK                Healthy      3.66 TB         3.66 TB            99.97%

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