I have a lot of customers with HP ProLiant ML350 Servers using HP SmartArray controllers. Since you can NOT configure SmartArray Controllers to handle Harddisks in JBOD mode (which is a requirement when using Storage Spaces), I have the following idea:
Configure the existing HDD drives as pairs in RAID1, let's say 6x HDD disk as 3x RAID1 pairs. Then add 2x SSD disks and also configure them as a RAID1 pair.
Now install Windows Server 2012 R2 on the first RAID1 HDD pair and then create a SIMPLE, TIERED Storage Space out of the remaining two RAID1 HDD and the RAID1 SSD pairs. Why do I want to do that?
a) Through this configuration I get a "big" tiered Virtual Disk with all advantages of tiering / performance
b) I do not have to replace the HP SmartArray Controllers
c) I have full Redundancy since all disks are in RAID1 pairs
d) I should be able to hot plug / replace failed disks without any problems since the SmartArray controller handles the disks at this layer / Windows Server should not even realize the disk failure (except of the performance degradation)
Does this work? I think it should because configuring a Storage Spaces with the "SIMPLE" Storage Layout means no Redundancy and no "Software"-RAID functionality on the OS layer - the Hardware RAID logic of the SmartArray controller should not be interferring with the Windows Server Storage Spaces layer?!?
BTW: NO Clustering of the Virtual Disk is planned - the Virtual Disk is used only as a simple File- and VHDX-Container.
Any feedback on this idea?
Mark
Configure the existing HDD drives as pairs in RAID1, let's say 6x HDD disk as 3x RAID1 pairs. Then add 2x SSD disks and also configure them as a RAID1 pair.
Now install Windows Server 2012 R2 on the first RAID1 HDD pair and then create a SIMPLE, TIERED Storage Space out of the remaining two RAID1 HDD and the RAID1 SSD pairs. Why do I want to do that?
a) Through this configuration I get a "big" tiered Virtual Disk with all advantages of tiering / performance
b) I do not have to replace the HP SmartArray Controllers
c) I have full Redundancy since all disks are in RAID1 pairs
d) I should be able to hot plug / replace failed disks without any problems since the SmartArray controller handles the disks at this layer / Windows Server should not even realize the disk failure (except of the performance degradation)
Does this work? I think it should because configuring a Storage Spaces with the "SIMPLE" Storage Layout means no Redundancy and no "Software"-RAID functionality on the OS layer - the Hardware RAID logic of the SmartArray controller should not be interferring with the Windows Server Storage Spaces layer?!?
BTW: NO Clustering of the Virtual Disk is planned - the Virtual Disk is used only as a simple File- and VHDX-Container.
Any feedback on this idea?
Mark