{"id":14489,"date":"2013-04-29T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=14489"},"modified":"2013-04-29T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T12:00:00","slug":"storage-spaces-inside-a-virtual-machine-is-not-supported","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=14489","title":{"rendered":"Storage Spaces Inside a Virtual Machine Is Not Supported"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m hooked on Storage Spaces, the mechanism in Windows Server 2012 where we can aggregate non-RAID disks and create thinly provisioned (optional), fault tolerant volumes, just like you\u2019ve been doing on a modern SAN (but Storage Spaces is more flexible, if not as feature rich).<\/p>\n<p>It appears that some like this feature so much that they\u2019ve started to implement it inside of virtual machines:<\/p>\n<p><strong>THIS IS NOT A SUPPORTED CONFIGURATION<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sure, you might see presenters like myself do this in demos.\u00a0 I make it clear: I only do this because I don\u2019t have the hardware to do Storage Spaces at the physical layer.\u00a0 Storage Spaces was designed to be created using physical disks \u2026 and then you can store your virtual machines on a Storage Space virtual disk.<\/p>\n<p>Why are people implementing Storage Spaces in a production VM?\u00a0 My primary guess is that they want to aggregate virtual hard disks to create a larger volume.\u00a0 VHD format files can only expand up to 2040 GB.\u00a0 OK \u2026 that\u2019s the wrong way to go about it!\u00a0 The correct solution would be one of the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div>Deploy Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and use VHDX files.\u00a0 They scale out to 64 TB \u2013 the maximum size of a VSS snapshot BTW.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>If you\u2019re stuck on vSphere (2 TB VMDK) or pre-WS2012 Hyper-V (2040 GB VHD) then (I hate saying this \u2026) use a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.petri.co.il\/choosing-hyper-v-storage-physical-disks.htm\" target=\"_blank\">physical disk<\/a> of some kind until you can upgrade to a scalable hypervisor like WS2012 Hyper-V and convert to the more flexible VHDX.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A second possible excuse is: \u201cI want to create volumes inside a VM\u201d.\u00a0 Anyone who has spent any time owning a virtualised platform will laugh at this person.\u00a0 There is a simple rule in our business: 1 volume = 1 virtual hard disk.\u00a0 It gives us complete flexibility over volume management both at the physical (placement) and virtual (resizing) layer.\u00a0 If you need an E: volume, hot-add a VHDX to the SCSI controller.\u00a0 If you need an F: volume, hot-add a VHDX to the SCSI controller.\u00a0 If you need to expand the G: volume, expand the G: VHDX and then expand the G: volume.<\/p>\n<p>The other reason<em> <\/em>I expect to hear via comments is \u201cwe\u2019re scared of virtual hard disk corruption so we want to RAID the disks in some way using Storage Spaces\u201d.\u00a0 Where to start?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div>I have never personally witnessed a corrupt virtual hard disk.\u00a0 When I have heard of such things it\u2019s because people do <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">stupid<\/span> things with snapshots or differential disks and they deserve what follows.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>The VHDX format has built-in protection for corruption that can be caused by power loss.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>DOING STORAGE SPACES INSIDE A VM IS NOT SUPPORTED!\u00a0 It\u2019s no one\u2019s fault, other than yours, <em>when<\/em> it misbehaves or breaks.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Please, just start using VHDX format virtual hard disks ASAP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m hooked on Storage Spaces, the mechanism in Windows Server 2012 where we can aggregate non-RAID disks and create thinly provisioned (optional), fault tolerant volumes, just like you\u2019ve been doing on a modern SAN (but Storage Spaces is more flexible, if not as feature rich). It appears that some like this feature so much that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=14489\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Storage Spaces Inside a Virtual Machine Is Not Supported&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[99,195,118],"class_list":["post-14489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-server","tag-storage","tag-virtualisation","tag-windows-server-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}