Windows 8 Storage Spaces: the "new" WHS Drive Extender

[voidpt]

Just read an interesting article on Ars Technica:
» Windows 8 Storage Spaces detailed: pooling redundant disk space for all

It again points to a Building Windows 8 blog post at MSDN:
» Virtualizing storage for scale, resiliency, and efficiency



Not sure if this tech in Windows 8 has been pointed out before, was news to me at least. Looks like my "server" will get Windows 8 before my desktop

[stanger89]

I see they finally added Parity-based protection, don't really like that you have to pick a size, that it works like Drobo and doesn't tell you how much space you actually have.

[wayner]

This looks interesting and useful. I wonder if they will add this to WHS v3, assuming that there is a future to WHS.

[Fuzzy]

The worst thing MS did in this regard, to me, was removing simple RAID-5 from windows 7. (I know, technically it was never in XP either, but it was able to WORK in xp with some tweaks). It was by far the simplest, and actually, more portable RAID setup I'd ever used, because it was standard windows formats. No proprietary RAID controllers to deal with, and it would work great across multiple drives and controllers.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

This looks interesting and useful. I wonder if they will add this to WHS v3, assuming that there is a future to WHS.

The future of WHS is going to depend on hard drive prices I'm thinking... If Taiwan can't get their crap dried out, I don't think people will be building any home servers for a while...

the cheapest 2TB drives are up over $150.. double what they were a year and a half ago.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

The worst thing MS did in this regard, to me, was removing simple RAID-5 from windows 7. (I know, technically it was never in XP either, but it was able to WORK in xp with some tweaks). It was by far the simplest, and actually, more portable RAID setup I'd ever used, because it was standard windows formats. No proprietary RAID controllers to deal with, and it would work great across multiple drives and controllers.

But it didn't support expansion, which greatly limits it's value, you have to buy your entire array up front, meaning you can't take advantage of falling drive prices. Also means you have to know how big you will need it to be when you build it, and when you fill it you have to build another array or copy all the data somewhere else while you rebuild the array with more/larger drives.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

But it didn't support expansion, which greatly limits it's value, you have to buy your entire array up front, meaning you can't take advantage of falling drive prices. Also means you have to know how big you will need it to be when you build it, and when you fill it you have to build another array or copy all the data somewhere else while you rebuild the array with more/larger drives.

Oh, I wasn't trying to imply that it was BETTER than storage spaces, just that its core advantage was that it was a part of the OS. This brought a level of portability to it that was unrivaled by any other architecture. My point was that this storage spaces is a good thing, because it will likely bring back that portability, while improving on its customizability. As long as it doesn't have tombstones....

[farscapesg1]

I'll be watching it, but I needed to rebuild my WHSv1 box anyways and made the move from WHS to ZFS (running OpenIndiana + Napp-it) and have no regrets. I may not be able to expand as easily with ZFS, but the other benefits I get out of it make up for it.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

... If Taiwan can't get their crap dried out, I don't think people will be building any home servers for a while...

I think you mean Thailand.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

I think you mean Thailand.

Yeah.. I do... I've got no working computer monitor at home, so i've been using my phone... It's far from 'optimal'...

[Chriscic]

I wonder if SageTV will run as a server on Windows 8. Keep having trouble with my current WHS setup, and it might be a good option just to scrap it when Win 8 comes, even if that's a ways off.

[Fuzzy]

It should run just fine. Windows 8 underneath is not all that different than windows 7. Even access to the new storage spaces should be relatively transparent to sagetv.

[wayner]

Why not go to Win7 today? We are moving away from the drive/folder methodology of arranging files in the computer world towards a tagging (akak metadata in Sage) so why does it matter if your video folder is on drives E:, F:, and G: rather than one big extended drive? And Sage has been pretty agnostic as to the storage of Recorded TV files for quite a while as your shouldn't really care where your TV files are physically stored in most instances - at least when it comes to the Sage UI.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

Why not go to Win7 today? We are moving away from the drive/folder methodology of arranging files in the computer world towards a tagging (akak metadata in Sage) so why does it matter if your video folder is on drives E:, F:, and G: rather than one big extended drive? And Sage has been pretty agnostic as to the storage of Recorded TV files for quite a while as your shouldn't really care where your TV files are physically stored in most instances - at least when it comes to the Sage UI.

I have always agreed with this stance as it has previously been used. Sage performs and behaves much better with separate drives than the drive combiner methods of the past. What I do feel storage spaces brings is the flexibility of splitting out protection methods between the various spaces. Also the relatively transparent (and invisible) replacement of failed storage and is another great advantage. These are things that were available in other methods before (like UnRaid and such) but never on the same system as the server (well, WHS, but I never liked that particular implementation - it never seemed fool-proof enough for me).

[Dargason]

Has anyone actually set up a Sage server using storage spaces?

I've been running Sage on windows 8 for a couple months now -- works great -- and I was thinking of setting up a drive pool (parity) for my recording directory, but I'm a little nervous about the comment that access times are slower, especially considering that I may be both writing and reading multiple files from the pool at the same time.

Any thoughts?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Dargason

Has anyone actually set up a Sage server using storage spaces?

I've been running Sage on windows 8 for a couple months now -- works great -- and I was thinking of setting up a drive pool (parity) for my recording directory, but I'm a little nervous about the comment that access times are slower, especially considering that I may be both writing and reading multiple files from the pool at the same time.

Any thoughts?

Access times may be slower, due to higher overhead, but actual throughput is likely to be unchanged, or even higher, depending on the drive configuration.