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Borek Bernard
Asked: 2012-06-30 13:44:41 +0800 CST

What are the advantages / disadvantages of using Storage Spaces in WS2012 vs RAID?

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I'm building a cheap server from commodity hardware that should have at least some fault tolerance regarding its storage. Now that "Storage Spaces" are available directly in the Windows server OS, is there any point in trying to set up a RAID array (probably RAID 1 in my case)? Or, to make the question more exact, what are the advantages / disadvantages of Storage Spaces vs. RAID 1?

storage-spaces windows-server-2012

1 Answers

  1. It's just software RAID at the OS level.

    So the actual question here is what are the advantages and disadvantages of software RAID vs hardware RAID? (And you can find answers to that just about anywhere.)

    Honestly, I'd avoid it for a while, at least outside of test scenarios. Let someone else be the guinea pig, and if/when it becomes a stable, resilient technology, then consider implementing it.

    I shudder to think about what new and interesting bugs will be discovered when Windows rot or a malware infestation or a really bad misconfiguration force you reinstall your OS. Or it's time to upgrade your aging Windows 2012 Server install to Windows 11, Enterprise. I sure wouldn't want to find out with my employer's data... or my data.

    Would you?

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