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Jan Zahradník
Asked: 2017-04-01 09:48:30 +0800 CST

Storage Spaces Direct very low available space

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I'm testing S2D. I have created cluster from 2 VMs and call PowerShell

Enable-ClusterStorageSpacesDirect -SkipEligibilityChecks -Confirm -CacheState Disabled

List of storage

Type Node Size  Used Percent
---- ---- ----  ---- -------
HDD  1    21GB     0 0%
HDD  1    129GB    0 0%
HDD  1    107GB    0 0%
HDD  1    140GB    0 0%
HDD  1    118GB    0 0%
HDD  1    11GB     0 0%
HDD  2    21GB     0 0%
HDD  2    129GB    0 0%
HDD  2    107GB    0 0%
HDD  2    118GB    0 0%
HDD  2    140GB    0 0%
HDD  2    11GB     0 0%

In Failover Manager I can see that S2D Clustered Windows Storage has 986 GB free space, but when I try to create new volume, the maximum available capacity is 51 GB. I would expect ~490 GB. Any clues why the maximum is such low? Which steps am I missing?

Update Adding extra 300 GB drive to each VM increased free space to 1.51 TB and maximum volume size to 63 GB. Still not satisfied with the result.

windows-server-2016

3 Answers

  1. I vote for shared storage. For the case, StarWind Virtual SAN Free seems to be a better option. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct are more about Enterprise having requirements to underlying storage and Windows Server's licenses. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/storage/storage-spaces/choosing-drives

    From my perspective, StarWind Virtual SAN would work here better since does not have mandatory requirements to underlying storage and provide shared storage on top of underlying with less to none penalty to both performance and capacity. https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-free

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  2. S2D needs some free spaces to self-heal it in case of a disaster.

    https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2016/11/21/deep-dive-pool-in-spaces-direct/

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  3. Best Answer

    Thanks to @CosmosDarwin who helped me to find that the error was in Failover Manager. PowerShell script

    New-Volume -FriendlyName "TEST" -FileSystem CSVFS_ReFS -StoragePoolFriendlyName S2D* -Size 200GB

    created the volume without any problems. Worth to note is that New-Volume cmdlet prints volume info when succeeded, but has no output when fails because is not running with Administrative privileges.

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