Problems with 2012 R2 Storage Spaces

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quivos
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 11, 2014 3:54 pm

Thu Dec 11, 2014 4:06 pm

Hi folks,

I'm having a really, really weird issue with using Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces + StarWind iSCSI (physical server).

I have two HDD in the server (well, 3 - OS is on another disk):
1.5 TB SAMSUNG-HD154UI
3.0 TB WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 (One of those Western Digital Red 'NAS' drives)

I've created two Storage Spaces on my server, identical configuration. 1 physical disk, 1 virtual disk, 1 NTFS volume - all default settings, de-duplication disabled. And mounted them to respective drive letters.

On the StarWind side, I have a iSCSI target and added the two Storage Spaces using 'Add Device' -> 'Virtual Hard Disk' -> 'Image File device' -> 'Create new virtual disk' and created vol1.img and vol2.img on the two disks.

The weird part? the 1.5 TB Storage Space works - the 3.0 TB doesn't. It simply get's marked with a red "!" and is marked as Non-Active. The 1.5 TB works perfect - and mounts correctly on my ESXi server.

If I create the 3TB volume without Storage Spaces, it works.

I've tried:
Recreating the Storage Spaces, different sizes, different names, different file systems, duplication enabled/disabled, different drive letters, new iSCSI target, moving the physical drive SATA port, crying a bit, hit my head on my desk while moving the drive, accidently cut myself with a screwdriver, made lasagna - with homemade pasta sauce and everything, and rebooted the machine about a zillion times.

What the .... am I'm missing here?
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Max (staff)
Staff
Posts: 533
Joined: Tue Apr 20, 2010 9:03 am

Mon Dec 15, 2014 4:01 pm

Combining lasagna and storage spaces should've helped.
You only need to know how to bake the SATA port between the pasta slices properly.

Jokes aside:
I assume you're running the latest version.

A few questions to understand the configuration better.
1. What are the img sizes?
2. Did you try to create different img with different sizes on the problematic space?
3. What is the block size you used when creating the device in the StarWind management console (512b or 4K ) ?

BTW: Storage spaces report the virtual disk as 4Kn (AF - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format).
And vSphere has issues working with these: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=2091600
Max Kolomyeytsev
StarWind Software
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