I have a Windows 2012R2 server with a 4TB RAID1 mirror (2 x 4TB HDD, using basic Windows software RAID, not storage spaces - can't boot from storage spaces pool) and some other non-mirrored data disks (1x 8TB, 2 x 3TB etc.)
This is configured with the OS and "Important Data" on the 4TB mirror, and "Less Important Data" on the other non-redundant disks.
The 4TB mirror is now nearly full, so I intend to either replace this mirror with a larger mirror, or replace this mirror with two larger non-mirrored drives, and use DrivePool to duplicate some data across them.
I'm evaluating whether the greater flexibility of using DrivePool is worth moving to that, instead of using a basic mirror as I am currently.
Current config is this:
C: - redundant bootable partition mirrored on Disk 1 and Disk 2
D: - redundant "Important Data" partition mirrored on Disk 1 and Disk 2, and backed up by CrashPlan
E:, F:, etc. - non-redundant data partitions for "Less Important Data" on Disks 3, 4, etc.
If I moved to DrivePool I guess the configuration would be this:
C: - non-redundant bootable partition on Disk1
D: - drivepool "Important Data" pool duplicated on Disk1 and Disk2, and backed up by CrashPlan
E: - drivepool "Less Important Data" pool spread across Disks 3, 4 etc.
- or -
C: - non-redundant bootable partition on Disk1
D: - drivepool pool spread across all disks, with "Important Data" folders set to only be stored and also duplicated on Disk1 and Disk2, and backed up by CrashPlan (or something similar using hierarchical pools)
I have a few questions about this:
Does it make sense to use DrivePool in this scenario, or should I just stick to using a normal RAID mirror?
Will DrivePool handle real-time duplication of large in-use files such as 127GB VM VHD's, and if so, is there a write-performance decrease, compared to a software mirror?
All volumes use Windows' data-deduplication. Will this continue to work with DrivePool? I understand the pool drive itself cannot have deduplication enabled, but will the drive/s storing the pool continue to deduplicate the pool data correctly?
Related to this, can DrivePool be configured in such a way that if I downloaded a file, then copied that file to multiple different folders, it would most likely store those all on one physical disk so that it can be deduplicated by the OS?
CrashPlan is used to backup some data. Can this be used to backup the pool drive itself (it needs to receive update notifications from the filesystem)?
I believe it also uses VSS to backup in-use files, but I as this is mostly static data storage I think files should not be in use so I may be able to live without that.
Alternatively, I could backup the data on the underlying disks themselves?
Are there any issues or caveats I haven't thought of here?
How does DrivePool handle long-path issues? Server 2012R2 doesn't have long-path support and I do occasionally run into path-length issues. I can only assume this is even worse when pooled data is stored in a folder, effectively increasing the path-length of every file?
Question
Ned
Hello all,
I have a Windows 2012R2 server with a 4TB RAID1 mirror (2 x 4TB HDD, using basic Windows software RAID, not storage spaces - can't boot from storage spaces pool) and some other non-mirrored data disks (1x 8TB, 2 x 3TB etc.)
This is configured with the OS and "Important Data" on the 4TB mirror, and "Less Important Data" on the other non-redundant disks.
The 4TB mirror is now nearly full, so I intend to either replace this mirror with a larger mirror, or replace this mirror with two larger non-mirrored drives, and use DrivePool to duplicate some data across them.
I'm evaluating whether the greater flexibility of using DrivePool is worth moving to that, instead of using a basic mirror as I am currently.
Current config is this:
C: - redundant bootable partition mirrored on Disk 1 and Disk 2
D: - redundant "Important Data" partition mirrored on Disk 1 and Disk 2, and backed up by CrashPlan
E:, F:, etc. - non-redundant data partitions for "Less Important Data" on Disks 3, 4, etc.
If I moved to DrivePool I guess the configuration would be this:
C: - non-redundant bootable partition on Disk1
D: - drivepool "Important Data" pool duplicated on Disk1 and Disk2, and backed up by CrashPlan
E: - drivepool "Less Important Data" pool spread across Disks 3, 4 etc.
- or -
C: - non-redundant bootable partition on Disk1
D: - drivepool pool spread across all disks, with "Important Data" folders set to only be stored and also duplicated on Disk1 and Disk2, and backed up by CrashPlan (or something similar using hierarchical pools)
I have a few questions about this:
Thanks!
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