Limitations
Number of drives and capacity:
- Up to 240 drives in one pool (in Windows Server 2012 R2, earlier - up to 160) but there can be several pools.
- Up to 80 drives in a clustered pool (up to 4 pools in cluster).
- Up to 64 virtual disks in one pool.
- The total capacity of the pool is up to 480 Tib.
Columns and number of drives in a virtual disk (VD):
|
VD-type |
Minimum number of columns |
Column / Drive Ratio |
Minimum number of drives |
Maximum number of columns |
|
Simple |
1 |
1:1 |
1 |
- |
|
2-way mirror |
1 |
1:2 |
2 |
- |
|
3-way mirror |
1 |
1:3 |
5 |
- |
|
Single parity |
3 |
1:1 |
3 |
8 |
|
Dual parity |
7 |
1:1 |
7 |
17 |
Also:
- The Storage Spaces virtual disk cannot be used as a boot disk.
- Only SAS, SATA and USB drives can be used. RAID controllers' volumes, iSCSI, FC and other volumes are not supported.
Cluster use requirements:
- "Thin" disks cannot be used. Only fixed provisioning is allowed.
- The minimum number of disks for a double mirror is 3, for a triple mirror it is 5.
- In a cluster: you can use VDs with Parity but only starting with Windows Storage Server 2012 R2.
- Disks used: only SAS with SPC (SCSI persistent reservation) support. Some of the early versions of SAS-drives do not support SPC…
