Confused on Storage Spaces with Parity and free space

pparks1

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Let's get this clear right at the start, I manage servers for a living and I understand RAID arrays and storage pretty well. i know the differences between RAID 0,1,5,6,10,50, etc.

In playing with Storage Spaces on Windows 8 and using a resiliency type of parity has left me confused as to how the drives are filling up as fast as what they are.

In my lab, I created a Windows 8 VM, with 3 x 4GB additional drives. So, 12GB of RAW capacity between the 3 drives.

CREATING THE STORAGE POOL
So, I created a Storage Pool using all 3 drives and am left with a total pool capacity of 9.75GB. It seems that about 750MB of each physical drive is consumed by overhead, leaving me with actual usable space of 3.25GB per drive.
ThePool.png

CREATING THE STORAGE SPACE WITH PARITY
So, I created a single space, used Parity for the resiliency type. I set the size to 6GB, so that including the parity information, only 9GB would be consumed. Thus, I'm not using "thin provisioning", but instead ensuring that I have enough capacity to actually store my data.

TheStorageSpace.png

A LOOK AT THE POOL AND SPACE WHEN DRIVE IS EMPTY
My confusion starts here. Even though I'm not yet storing a single file, approx 35% of my pool is being used. So, considering it's parity, and RAID (Raid 3 specifically from what I have read), I have to assume that it's just visually showing me that 1 out of my 3 drives will be used for parity, and thus nearly 33% will be consumed by parity.
Empty.png


COPY A SINGLE 1GB FILE TO MY NEW STORAGE SPACE
So, I copy in 1 single 1GB ISO file and place it into my Storage Space.
Single1GBfile.png

A look at my storage pool, leaves me confused. My pool usage went from 3.50GB used to 5.75GB used because of 1 single 1GB file????? If it wrote say 500MB to 1 drive, and 500MB to a 2nd drive, and consumed 500MB in parity on a 3rd drive...that would be 1.5GB....so I'm unsure how 2.25GB of space was reportedly used.

StoragePoolAfter1GBfile.png

COPY A FEW MORE FILES TO THE STORAGE SPACE (Approx 4GB worth)
So, I copy some more files into my Storage Space. It's 7 files and totals 4GB of space
7files.png

Here is the Properties of my Storage Space drive in Explorer;

Summaryof7Files.png

Explorer looks right, approx 1.8GB free out of my 6GB volume (after copying in 4GB of files)

ExplorerWith7Files.PNG

However, my Storage Pool is pretty much full. Huh? How can this be, I've only copied 4GB of files into a 6GB volume. How can it possibly be out of space??
StoragePoolFullAfter7Files.png


Summary
3 x 4GB setup would provide 12GB of RAW space (say, if I did RAID 0)

With standard RAID 5 on a server, I would expect 2 x 4GB or so usable (around 8GB), with 4GB dedicated to parity

With Windows 8 Storage Spaces, I setup 6GB for what I thought would be "usable", leaving 3GB for parity and leaving around .75GB still free in the pool.

But yet, after copying 4GB of data, I'm maxed out. And trying to copy any more data to my Storage Space takes the Space "OFFLINE" as it's full.

So, it seems 4GB out of 12GB is usuable. So, it's 33% data, and 66% parity and overhead. How can this be this inefficient? A parity setup should provide more "usable" space than a 2-way mirror....which would give me 50%.
 

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Adding Insult to Injury, I tried a 2-way MIRROR with Storage Spaces

Added 2 x 6GB drives to my machine, created a New Pool, created a new 2 way Storage Space pool. As expected, .75GB on each physical drive was unusable as a result of overhead...so my Pool provided 5.25GB on each drive, x 2 drives, so 10.50GB total.

And since I was using 2 WAY MIRRORING, I expected to only get 5.25GB of total usable space.

However, after copying the 7 files that are 4GB from above, my storage space went offline and said it was FULL. WTF???

2WayMirrorFull.png

You can see that Explorer reports things correctly, I have free space. My 2 way mirror drive is not 100% full.
2wayMirrorHasFreeSpace.png
 

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So, I think the underlying issue is the way that Storage Spaces allocated space on the physical volumes. The data is striped across "Slabs". The "slabs", are 256MB in size. So, lets say that you need to write a 50MB file. When you using a "2-way-mirror", the system will ask the Storage Pool for 2 "slabs" on different disks and will write the 50MB file into slab 1 and slab 2. So, in theory, even though you added just a single 50MB file....the underlying storage system would have consumed 2 more slabs at 256MB each...so 512MB of space in the pool would be consumed.

I have to assume in my parity example, that I might have had 200MB free in a slab, but since I needed to store a 1GB file, the system would have asked for 4 more slabs and thus left free space on other slabs that simply couldn't be used because my file was too big.

Therefore, my Storage Space was actually running out of free slabs to store more files....rather than actually running out of disk space based on the # of slabs already allocated. Had I stored 250MB ISO's which would have fit into a single slab and filled it nearly full...I might have gotten closer to 6GB of data on the Storage Space.

Oh well, moral of the story is that Storage Spaces should probably be used cautiously and stringing together disks might result in far less actual usable disk space than you think.
 

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Yeah, I was about to say that the 256MB slabs are probably what's causing it.

But gee, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the workings of Storage Spaces, I understand RAID pretty well as it's not difficult to get, but Storage Spaces to me is like a new BMW versus a car with a carburetor and choke.
 

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Storage spaces isn't much more than an implementation of LVM which other OS vendors have had available for many, many, many years. Their implementation leaves quite a lot to be desired. Hopefully they improve upon it dramatically. Based on what I have seen, I wouldn't use it in any type of production environment. I'd much rather just have standalone disks with their own drive letters.
 

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Storage spaces isn't much more than an implementation of LVM which other OS vendors have had available for many, many, many years. Their implementation leaves quite a lot to be desired. Hopefully they improve upon it dramatically. Based on what I have seen, I wouldn't use it in any type of production environment. I'd much rather just have standalone disks with their own drive letters.

There kind of does leave some things to be desired. Storage Spaces is most preferable on Server 2012 and ReFS to offer the best safeguard against data loss/corruption.

Having said that, I'd still use in a production environment. From what I know and have researched (partly thanks to you) Storage Spaces seems a better option over RAID. It's like RAID, but enhanced more or less. And, there's also the fact that ANY interface type of hard drive can be used.

Although I kind of want ReFS...maybe Windows Blue or 9?
 

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Having said that, I'd still use in a production environment. From what I know and have researched (partly thanks to you) Storage Spaces seems a better option over RAID. It's like RAID, but enhanced more or less. And, there's also the fact that ANY interface type of hard drive can be used.
It's simpler than RAID. However, a hardware based RAID solution is FAR and away better as far as performance is concerned. Storage spaces with Parity is Abysmally slow.
 

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Having said that, I'd still use in a production environment. From what I know and have researched (partly thanks to you) Storage Spaces seems a better option over RAID. It's like RAID, but enhanced more or less. And, there's also the fact that ANY interface type of hard drive can be used.
It's simpler than RAID. However, a hardware based RAID solution is FAR and away better as far as performance is concerned. Storage spaces with Parity is Abysmally slow.

Oh yeah this is true! Depends on the RAID version though if you get increased speeds. Storage Spaces seems more like used for archiving data, as well as being chunked into different redundancy options. I've yet to see any parity speed tests, how slow is abysmally slow?
 

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    16 gig DDR3
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    ASUS R9 270
    Screen Resolution
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    Hard Drives
    1 TB Seagate Barracuda (starting to hate Seagate)
    x2 3 TB Toshibas
    Windows 8.1 is installed on a SanDisk Ultra Plus 256 GB
    PSU
    OCZ 500 watt
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    A current work in progres as I'll be building the physical case myself. It shall be fantastic.
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    Logitech K750 wireless solar powered keyboard
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Storage Spaces is designed to solve a number of problems that RAID doesn't do. If you want RAID, then use RAID. Storage Spaces has similarities, but it is designed differently in order to allow for things that RAID doesn't do.

For instance, you can't create a volume that's larger than your available capacity in RAID, and then just add more disks as your volumes fill up. In RAID, You have to add more drives to the array, reconfigure it, then expand the volumes.. all this is pretty complicated to do correctly, and very confusing.

SS is designed as a simple, create a gigantic volume or set of volumes.. and just forget about it until it runs out of disk space, then just pop in more drives, and everything just keeps working. Certainly, it should do a better job of notifying the user when space is getting low, and yes.. it's pretty slow.. but it's designed to be used for long term storage, not for performance. You know, storing your library of ripped movies, for instance.

As to your confusion about space usage, you're really only seeing that problem because you're working with small drives. If you were talking about multiple terabyte arrays, then this is something you won't even notice.
 

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I've yet to see any parity speed tests, how slow is abysmally slow?
~15MB/sec. Whereas a 2 way mirror on same hardware gets around 85MB/sec

As to your confusion about space usage, you're really only seeing that problem because you're working with small drives. If you were talking about multiple terabyte arrays, then this is something you won't even notice.
Well, tell that to people who are still complaining that their 2TB hard drive is not 2,000GB, but rather 1.81GB within Windows.

Sure, my case is exaggerated due to small drives..no doubt about that. But the underlying concern is still a concern. Losing 100GB or so on 2-3TB is small...but it's still a loss.
 

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Everything is a tradeoff. If you are concerned about losing storage, and are willing to deal with the added complexity of RAID, then use RAID. It's really that simple.

If you want the simplicity of Storage Spaces, and the ability to just add more drives as they fill up, and are willing to sacrifice some storage for that simplicity, then use SS's.

Everything in life has tradeoffs. Complaining about what is does not solve anything.
 

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Well I think complaining a bit is in order when a 6gb volume cannot store more than 4 gb of data. That's a 33% loss that I would not expect to be happening. I've not seen the behavior with any other storage system before.

My post was to get confirmation and a possible explanation as to why it was doing what it was doing. It wasn't really to complain, but rather to understand.
 

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Well I think complaining a bit is in order when a 6gb volume cannot store more than 4 gb of data. That's a 33% loss that I would not expect to be happening. I've not seen the behavior with any other storage system before.

My post was to get confirmation and a possible explanation as to why it was doing what it was doing. It wasn't really to complain, but rather to understand.

You've not seen that behavior from other storage systems before BECAUSE THERE ARE NO OTHER STORAGE SYSTEMS THAT DO WHAT STORAGE SPACES DOES.

You don't expect it to behave that way because you are expecting it to behave like RAID, BUT IT IS NOT RAID.

Storage Spaces has a unique requirement, that no other storage system has. IT CAN CREATE VOLUMES LARGER THAN THE PHYSICAL CAPACITY OF THE DRIVES and CAN GROW TO MEET THE FULL CAPACITY BY SIMPLY ADDING MORE DRIVES WITHOUT RECONFIGURATION.

Those features are what drives the way Storage Spaces behaves. If you don't like that behavior, then it means that those features are not important enough to you. If space utilization is more important to you than convenience, then don't use Storage Spaces. It's that simple.

This is not a bug. This is not a design flaw. This is how it is supposed to operate. It won't be "fixed".

This is the same problem you have with Windows 8. You want it to be something that its not. So you complain about non-stop as if complaining will somehow magically make it into what you want it to be.

It's like you're complaining that a pick up truck doesn't have the same handling as a sports car. You keep complaining that all the other vehicles you've driven have great handling, so you don't understand why the pickup truck's is worse. It's not designed for taking corners at 120mph, it's design to haul stuff around. If you kept on complaining about this, people would eventually want to strangle you.

At some point, you have to just accept that things are what they are. Otherwise, you just end up annoying everyone you talk to.
 

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This is not a bug. This is not a design flaw. This is how it is supposed to operate. It won't be "fixed".
So, when you create a 6GB volume and that already takes into account all of the overhead and parity space, you are fine with it being full after about 4GB of actual data rather than 6?

I don't feel it's unreasonable to assume that a drive showing up under Windows Explorer as having 6GB of capacity would actually hold quite close to 6GB, but as I have shown, it really holds closer to 4GB of data. That's 33% data loss. When you start dealing with multi-terabyte drives that could equate to 300-600GB of "lost" space in addition to the parity. That's insane.

Like I said, I created a Storage space that consisted of 3 x 4GB drives, with parity. That's 12GB of RAW space, but it was "full" when I placed 4GB of data on it. So, if a user buys 3 x 4TB hard drives for say $409 each (Western Digital RE WD4000FYYZ Internal Hard Drive - Newegg.com), they would have 12TB of RAW space, but might only get 4TB of storage before having to get some more drives. REALLY?????? Unsure if I would trade a bit of ease of administration for that much potential unused space.


It's like you're complaining that a pick up truck doesn't have the same handling as a sports car. You keep complaining that all the other vehicles you've driven have great handling, so you don't understand why the pickup truck's is worse. It's not designed for taking corners at 120mph, it's design to haul stuff around. If you kept on complaining about this, people would eventually want to strangle you.

My argument is more akin to saying a pickup truck is rated to tow 8,500lbs...but yet when you attach a 5,000lb trailer the truck is unable to move.
 
Last edited:

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Well I think complaining a bit is in order when a 6gb volume cannot store more than 4 gb of data. That's a 33% loss that I would not expect to be happening. I've not seen the behavior with any other storage system before.

My post was to get confirmation and a possible explanation as to why it was doing what it was doing. It wasn't really to complain, but rather to understand.

This is most likely due to the block based architecture of Storage Spaces, if it was a file object based architecture, that loss wouldn't happen. Those "slabs" are probably the cause. There is some wasted space it seems, but since this is a new technology that will be improved later, I'd just take the hit and move around it and when it gets improved I'll be able to talk about them old days how we had to deal with losses like that.
 

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    1 TB Seagate Barracuda (starting to hate Seagate)
    x2 3 TB Toshibas
    Windows 8.1 is installed on a SanDisk Ultra Plus 256 GB
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    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender, but I might go back on KIS 2014
This is most likely due to the block based architecture of Storage Spaces, if it was a file object based architecture, that loss wouldn't happen. Those "slabs" are probably the cause. There is some wasted space it seems, but since this is a new technology that will be improved later, I'd just take the hit and move around it and when it gets improved I'll be able to talk about them old days how we had to deal with losses like that.

It's fine, if you guys are willing to lose 66% of your RAW space and that's acceptable, by all means...have at it. I'd instead go for a 50% at most loss, setup an external NAS device and run a regularly synchronize job that kept the storage drive and the backup drive synchronized. But that is just me.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Self-Built in July 2009
    CPU
    Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz OC'd to 3.40Ghz
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev. 1.1, F12 BIOS
    Memory
    8GB G.Skill PI DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12 timings
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA 1280MB Nvidia GeForce GTX570
    Sound Card
    Realtek ALC899A 8 channel onboard audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    23" Acer x233H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2 SSD
    Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black, 32MB cache. WD1001FALS
    PSU
    Corsair 620HX modular
    Case
    Antec P182
    Cooling
    stock
    Keyboard
    ABS M1 Mechanical
    Mouse
    Logitech G9 Laser Mouse
    Internet Speed
    15/2 cable modem
    Other Info
    Windows and Linux enthusiast. Logitech G35 Headset.
This is most likely due to the block based architecture of Storage Spaces, if it was a file object based architecture, that loss wouldn't happen. Those "slabs" are probably the cause. There is some wasted space it seems, but since this is a new technology that will be improved later, I'd just take the hit and move around it and when it gets improved I'll be able to talk about them old days how we had to deal with losses like that.

It's fine, if you guys are willing to lose 66% of your RAW space and that's acceptable, by all means...have at it. I'd instead go for a 50% at most loss, setup an external NAS device and run a regularly synchronize job that kept the storage drive and the backup drive synchronized. But that is just me.
33%.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    ASUS
    CPU
    AMD FX 8320
    Motherboard
    Crosshair V Formula-Z
    Memory
    16 gig DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    ASUS R9 270
    Screen Resolution
    1440x900
    Hard Drives
    1 TB Seagate Barracuda (starting to hate Seagate)
    x2 3 TB Toshibas
    Windows 8.1 is installed on a SanDisk Ultra Plus 256 GB
    PSU
    OCZ 500 watt
    Case
    A current work in progres as I'll be building the physical case myself. It shall be fantastic.
    Cooling
    Arctic Cooler with 3 heatpipes
    Keyboard
    Logitech K750 wireless solar powered keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Touch Mouse
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender, but I might go back on KIS 2014
This is most likely due to the block based architecture of Storage Spaces, if it was a file object based architecture, that loss wouldn't happen. Those "slabs" are probably the cause. There is some wasted space it seems, but since this is a new technology that will be improved later, I'd just take the hit and move around it and when it gets improved I'll be able to talk about them old days how we had to deal with losses like that.

It's fine, if you guys are willing to lose 66% of your RAW space and that's acceptable, by all means...have at it. I'd instead go for a 50% at most loss, setup an external NAS device and run a regularly synchronize job that kept the storage drive and the backup drive synchronized. But that is just me.
33%.

Nope, 66%

Remember, you had 3 x 4GB drives. So, 12GB total. Set up the Parity Storage space and you lose approx 1/3 to the Parity setup. Then, I had created a 6GB volume out of the approx 9GB that should have been there. But when I got to 4GB used, I was totally out of space. That means 4GB out of 12GB was usasble, or 8GB out of 12GB was not. 8/12 is 66.66666%
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Self-Built in July 2009
    CPU
    Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz OC'd to 3.40Ghz
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev. 1.1, F12 BIOS
    Memory
    8GB G.Skill PI DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12 timings
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA 1280MB Nvidia GeForce GTX570
    Sound Card
    Realtek ALC899A 8 channel onboard audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    23" Acer x233H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2 SSD
    Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black, 32MB cache. WD1001FALS
    PSU
    Corsair 620HX modular
    Case
    Antec P182
    Cooling
    stock
    Keyboard
    ABS M1 Mechanical
    Mouse
    Logitech G9 Laser Mouse
    Internet Speed
    15/2 cable modem
    Other Info
    Windows and Linux enthusiast. Logitech G35 Headset.
Have you tried using the PowerShell commands for Storage Spaces to look around each individual drive? I think there are some that MIGHT be of some use to see what's going on here.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    ASUS
    CPU
    AMD FX 8320
    Motherboard
    Crosshair V Formula-Z
    Memory
    16 gig DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    ASUS R9 270
    Screen Resolution
    1440x900
    Hard Drives
    1 TB Seagate Barracuda (starting to hate Seagate)
    x2 3 TB Toshibas
    Windows 8.1 is installed on a SanDisk Ultra Plus 256 GB
    PSU
    OCZ 500 watt
    Case
    A current work in progres as I'll be building the physical case myself. It shall be fantastic.
    Cooling
    Arctic Cooler with 3 heatpipes
    Keyboard
    Logitech K750 wireless solar powered keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Touch Mouse
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender, but I might go back on KIS 2014
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