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 | Min number of columns | Column / Drive Ratio | Min number of drives | Max 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…