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Extend Storage Pool and Virtual Disk (Storage Space)

Answered Extend Storage Pool and Virtual Disk (Storage Space)

  • Thursday, March 29, 2012 5:22 PM
     
     
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    I created the Storage Pool of 20 1,8Tb physical disks - 1 disk hot spare, 19 disks data store.
    Created the virtual disk on the pool - data redundancy type mirror, size whole storage pool (with Create the largest virtual disk possible up to the specified size  checked).
    After what i added 4 1,8Tb disks to the pool (data store usage). At     Server Manager\File and Storage Services\Storage Pools i can see Free Space on the pool - 9,57 Tb.

    But extend of the vdisk was unsuccessful with error:

    Error extending virtual disk : Unspecified Error
    Extended information: The physical resources of this disk have been exhausted.


    What am i doing wrong?


     

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  • Tuesday, April 03, 2012 9:37 AM
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    Hi,

    I tried to create a storage pool with 2x58GB physical disks, created a Fixed virtual disk with "Create the largest xxx" checked. Create a volume with that virtual disk after it is finished.

    Then I added 1x30GB hard disk to the storage poll and try to extend the virtual disk. It shows Failed in Status (but not error message as yours).

    Then added 1x15GB har disk to the storage pool and try to extend again. It is sucessful. It tired to extend to 60GB and then 65GB.

    TechNet Subscriber Support in forum |If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

     
  • Thursday, August 23, 2012 6:07 PM
     
     
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    Hello Sergey,

    Have u found an answer yet? I have exact the same problem. After adding 2 disks to the storage pool the current virtual disk should use the added space but it's not. If i look at the properties of the virtual disk I can see it's using all the disks. 4 of them are full and the 2 newley added are empty but the virtual disk is not using them. Also getting the exhausted message.

     
  • Tuesday, September 18, 2012 10:09 AM
     
     
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    Does anyone find a solution for that? I have the same issue here.

    Regards

    Patrick

     
  • Tuesday, September 18, 2012 3:16 PM
     
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    This has to do with columns.  In Storage Spaces and Pools (SSP), when you create a mirror set, it will put half the available physical disks on each side of the mirror to create two data copies.  Then SSP will stripe across all the physical disks in each data copy.  So if you have 20 physical disks in the pool and you create a mirror set, you will use 10 physical disks on each data copy.  Within the data copy, a stipe set will be created on 10 physical disks.  This means that the stripe set will end up being either 4 or 8 columns (I recall which).  SSP maxes out how many columns it will setup by default.  The reason the 'number of columns' is important is that if you want to add more disks to the set, you have to match the number of columns to do it.

    You can alway check the number of columns by looking at the properties for the virtual disk (under details).  Use this little formula...

    "minimum number of disks needed to extend mirror set" = "number of columns" X "number of data copies"

    So if you have a 2 way mirror set (2 data copies) that has a number of columes of 4, you will need to add 8 additional physical disks to be able to extentend the virtual disk.

       

    Robert Mitchell Senior Support Escalation Engineer Microsoft Corp.

     
  • Tuesday, September 18, 2012 5:58 PM
     
     
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    What is the layout is parity and not mirror?

    This space intentionally left blank

     
  • Friday, September 21, 2012 2:29 PM
     
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    If the layout is parity then your 'number of data copies' is 1.  Same formula applies.

    If the layout is simple then your 'number of data copies is 1.  Same formula applies.

    The only time your 'number of data copies' is different is with mirroring.  2way mirroring will be 2, and 3 way mirroring will be 3.

    When in doubt, you can look up the numberofdatacopies and the numberofcolumns in the properties of the virtual disk.

    Robert Mitchell Senior Support Escalation Engineer Microsoft Corp.

     
  • Friday, September 28, 2012 8:31 AM
     
     
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    Sometimes an "unspecified error" occures when 3,5 TB is typed instead of 3.5 TB when extending VHDs.
     
  • Thursday, November 15, 2012 5:56 AM
     
     
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    If the layout is parity then your 'number of data copies' is 1.  Same formula applies.

    If the layout is simple then your 'number of data copies is 1.  Same formula applies.

    The only time your 'number of data copies' is different is with mirroring.  2way mirroring will be 2, and 3 way mirroring will be 3.

    When in doubt, you can look up the numberofdatacopies and the numberofcolumns in the properties of the virtual disk.

    Robert Mitchell Senior Support Escalation Engineer Microsoft Corp.

    So If I understand you correctly, If I have a Virtual Disk set to parity on 5 disks pool and I want to extend it I need to add 5 more disks to the pool in order to expand it.

    If that is correct then there is something wrong with storage pools.  With simple and parity you should only have to add 1 disk to expand the size of the Virtual Disk, where as a mirror should have to add 2 or 3 depending on if it is a 2-way or 3-way mirror

     
  • Saturday, December 29, 2012 1:46 AM
     
     
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    While I don't quite understand the underpinnings fully I believe I have proven this to be true.  My scenario is a bit specialized, but the results seem to indicate a solution.  The environment is one where we want a server to consume LUNs from a SAN as needed and grow over years.  Since my disks are really in a SAN, we have little use for raid-5 or mirroring.  We want one Windows Server, with a 4TB disk, growing by 2TB LUNs  I started with 2x2TB LUNs in a pool, with a 4TB V-Disk (raid-0/simple/stripped) and a 4TB Volume.  When I added the 3rd 2TB LUN, the pool would expand to 6TB, but the V-Disk told me there were no physical resources and was stuck at 4TB.  I tried to accomplish this task a number of ways and failed.  With the "columns" in mind, I did this (Keep in mind that if you want Raid-1 or 5 you will still have to grow in sets):

    1.  Create a Storage Pool as small as possible, in my case a single 2TB disk.  

    2.  Create a 2TB V-Disk (striped in your favorite color).

    3.  Create a 2TB Volume.

    4.  Add a disk to the pool, thus expanding the initial column setting over a new disk.

    5.  Expand the V-Disk and Volume.

    6.  Add a disk to the pool, thus expanding the initial column setting over 3 disks.

    7.  Expand the V-Disk and Volume.

    This is a highly specific solution, but I believe you could create a parity 3-disk set and expand 3-disk at a time, or a mirror 2-disk set and expand 2-disks at a time based on my testing.