Windows Server 2012 : Highly available, easy-to-manage multi-server platform - Cost efficiency - Storage Spaces

Storage Spaces can virtualize storage to create what are called storage pools. A storage pool is an aggregation of unallocated space on physical disks installed in or connected to servers. Storage pools are flexible and elastic, allowing you to add or remove disks from the pool as your demand for storage grows or shrinks.

Once you’ve created a storage pool using Storage Spaces, you can provision storage from the pool by creating virtual disks. A virtual disk behaves exactly like a physical disk except that it can span multiple physical disks within the storage pool. Virtual disks can host simple volumes or volumes with resiliency (mirroring or parity) to increase the reliability or performance of the disk. A virtual disk is sometimes called a LUN.

Configuring a storage pool using Storage Spaces requires that you have at least one unallocated physical disk available (a disk with no volumes on it). If you want to create a mirrored volume, you’ll need at least two physical disks; a parity volume requires at least three physical disks. Pools can consist of a mixture of disks of different types and sizes. Table 1 shows the different types of disks supported by Storage Spaces. These disks could be installed inside servers on your network or within just-a-bunch-of-disks (JBOD) enclosures.

You can use Server Manager or PowerShell to configure your storage pools, virtual disks, and volumes. To create a new storage pool using Server Manager, select Storage Pools under File And Storage Services. The primordial pool contains unallocated physical disks on the servers you are managing.

To create a new storage pool, click Tasks in the Storage Pools tile and select New Storage Pool:

The New Storage Pool Wizard is started, and after specifying a name for your new pool, you can select which physical disks you want to include in your pool. We’ll select all three available Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disks for our pool, with the first two disks used for storage and the third designated as a “hot spare” disk that Storage Spaces can bring online automatically if it needs to, such as if one of the other two disks fails:

On completing the wizard, you have the option of creating a new virtual disk when the wizard closes:

The New Virtual Disk Wizard lets you provision storage from your new pool to create virtual disks that span one or more physical disks within your pool:

After you have selected a pool and specified a name for your new virtual disk, you can choose whether to create a simple virtual disk or one with resiliency:

Next, you will select either fixed or thin as the provisioning type :

You’ll also need to specify the size of your new virtual disk. Once you’ve finished provisioning your new virtual disk, you can create volumes on it using the New Volume Wizard by selecting a server and virtual disk and specifying size, drive letter, and file system settings for the volume.

Once you’ve finished creating your storage pools, virtual disks, and volumes, you can manage them using the Storage Pool page of Server Manager:

     New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName Pool01 -ResiliencySettingName Simple -Size 200GB
-FriendlyName VDiskSimplePS -ProvisioningType Fixed -NumberOfDataCopies 1 -NumberOfColumns 9

     New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName Pool01 -ResiliencySettingName Mirror -Size 200GB
-FriendlyName VDiskMirrorPS -ProvisioningType Fixed -NumberOfDataCopies 3 -NumberOfColumns 3

   Get-VirtualDisk | ft FriendlyName, ResiliencySettingName, NumberOfColumns,
NumberOfDataCopies, @{Expression={$_.Size / 1GB}; Label="Size(GB)"}, @{Expression={$_.
FootprintOnPool / 1GB}; Label="PoolFootprint(GB)"} -AutoSize

   FriendlyName   ResiliencySettingName NumberOfColumns
NumberOfDataCopies Size(GB) PoolFootprint(GB)

   ------------   --------------------- --------------- ------------------
-- ------ -----------------

   VDiskSimpleUI Simple                              8                   1
200               200

   VDiskMirrorUI Mirror                              4                   2
200               400

   VDiskSimplePS Simple                              9                   1
200.25            200.25

   VDiskMirrorPS Mirror                              3                   3
200.25            600.75