Using Storage Spaces
To create a storage pool, follow these steps:
1 . From the Tasks menu, choose New Storage Pool, which launches the New Storage
Pool Wizard.
2 . Enter a name for the new storage pool and an optional description, and then click
Next.
3 . On the next screen, select the physical disks that are available to be added to the
new pool and their allocation. The default allocation for disks is Data Store, to be
used as part of the virtual disks created, but can also be reserved for Hot Spare
purposes. Click Next.
4 . Once the confirmation is displayed, click Create to create the storage pool.A storage pool is now available, and the next step is to create virtual disks within the
storage pool, which can then have volumes created on them to be used by the
operating system. The nomenclature is unfortunate here. While the term virtual disk
is used by Storage Spaces, it is not a virtual hard disk of any kind and does not
leverage VHD or VHDX. In this context, a virtual disk is simply an object created
within a storage pool that is seen as a disk by the operating system, which writes
directly to blocks within the storage pool.
Storage Spaces introduced a feature that was previously available only when using
external storage solutions such as SANs and NAS devices: the capability to thin-
provision storage. During the creation of a virtual disk, the option is available to create
the new virtual disk as fixed (which means that all space for the size of the virtual disk
is allocated at creation time) or thin (which means that space is taken from the pool
only as needed). Using a thin-provisioned disk allows a virtual disk to be created far
larger than the actual storage available. This allows you to create a large volume
initially without having to preallocate physical storage.
Now, this does not mean that you can store more data in the thinly provisioned disk
than is allocated to the pool, but that typically volumes fill up over time. I may create a
10TB thin disk that initially has only1TB of physical storage associated with it, but as
the amount of data increases and approaches 1TB, I would add another 1TB of physical
storage to the pool just by adding more disks. As it approaches 2TB, I add another 1TB
of storage by adding more disks, and so on. As long as I add physical disks before it
fills, there is no issue. Alerts will be generated, notifying me that a storage pool is
reaching the threshold, giving me time to add the required storage. When you create a
virtual disk, all you need to know is which storage pool you’ll use to create the disk.
No knowledge of physical disks is required or even openly available. The point of
Storage Spaces is this abstraction to create virtual disks as needed to suit your
requirements. To create a virtual disk, perform the following steps:
1 . Select a storage pool in which to create a new virtual disk, and in the Virtual Disks
section, select the New Virtual Disk task.