Windows Server 2012 R2 and Storage Spaces compatiblity

[ahelland]

I'm running Windows Server 2012 R2, and I've got the HDDs added to Storage Spaces.

Initially I installed v6, but did an upgrade to v8 Beta right afterwards. (So, it was a fairly clean setup.)

I'm not able to create thick provisioned virtual disks, but thin provisioned LSFS seems to work. (These can't be put into HA/Clustered though right?)

I'm getting "Failed to open image file [...]" in the event viewer.

I know that Storage Spaces use 4Kb allocation units by default, and Starwind wants 512b. But I thought on the basis of this post (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/forums/post19654.html) that in v8 this wouldn't be an issue any longer. Is there still something blocking the use of Storage Spaces, or is it a beta issue?

[anton (staff)]

There are issues with layering our targets on top of the Storage Spaces (right, because of a native 4KB blocks). We're working on this and will fix for release for sure.

[turkina]

I'm using a fresh install of v8 Beta on top of Windows 2012 R2 Storage Spaces and haven't had any problems. Can create thick LUNs fine.

[fbifido]

I'm using a fresh install of v8 Beta on top of Windows 2012 R2 Storage Spaces and haven't had any problems. Can create thick LUNs fine.

Which version of v8 beta are you using, the current version is v8beta2(8.0.6180) ?

Does this LUN you created say "FLAT" for Device Type ?
and imagefile# for Device Name ?


anton

The FLAT is not LSFS right ?
So it does not have the dedup & auto defrag ?
So does that mean LSFS does not have thick ?

I can't use LSFS thin with Windows server 2012 R2 Storage space with esxi 5.5. I can create the LUN, but if I try to use it, like install windows 8.1 x86 on that LUN, windows installation will fail, and esxi 5.5 will vomit the LUN, and if you try to add the LUN back to esxi 5.5 it will fail. v8b1 had its problems but this was not one of them.

Thanks.

[turkina]

Which version of v8 beta are you using, the current version is v8beta2(8.0.6180) ?

Does this LUN you created say "FLAT" for Device Type ?
and imagefile# for Device Name ?


anton

The FLAT is not LSFS right ?
So it does not have the dedup & auto defrag ?
So does that mean LSFS does not have thick ?

I can't use LSFS thin with Windows server 2012 R2 Storage space with esxi 5.5. I can create the LUN, but if I try to use it, like install windows 8.1 x86 on that LUN, windows installation will fail, and esxi 5.5 will vomit the LUN, and if you try to add the LUN back to esxi 5.5 it will fail. v8b1 had its problems but this was not one of them.

Thanks.

Latest beta, 8.0.6180. Image files. Device type is "FLAT."

[Bohdan (staff)]

Thick (ImageFile) devices don't support underlaying disks with 4k block size now. Previous versions allowed to create devices on such disks, but devices could function incorrectly.
Now we have added check for 4k block size at the stage of device initialization.

[fbifido]

Thick (ImageFile) devices don't support underlaying disks with 4k block size now. Previous versions allowed to create devices on such disks, but devices could function incorrectly.
Now we have added check for 4k block size at the stage of device initialization.

So if we tell Storage Space to use 8K block size, we should not have any problems, right.
because I re-did my lab with storage space and set the block size to 8k and that was fine, I installed an exchange 2013 VM on the Thick LUN.

because that worked, I decided to test the LSFS, and created a test LUn, on my c drive, that windows 2012 R2 is installed on, I created the test LUN with 8k block side thin, connect it to esxi 5.5, tried to install a windows 8.1 pro VM on it but it failed.
And because of that esxi 5.5 does not show any of my LUNs (thick or thin). I will restart my esxi 5.5 to see if the LUN comes back up.

PLEASE can put a button on your ISCSI management interface under server log, to send log to support, with the option to type in a free text, but not letting an email program pop-up to send it.

[Alex (staff)]

Storage spaces report 4k logical block size when reside on disks with 4k physical block size, even when disk reports 512 bytes logical block size.
4k block size for underlying storage is still not supported. It can work in some conditions, but there is some work to be done to add full support of 4k blocks.