Hi everyone,

Can anyone tell me if I can make use of a PCIe SSD device in order to make use of the auto-tiering functionality within Storage Spaces?  I would prefer to a PCIe SSD device rather than a standard SSD, but I can't seem to find any information anywhere if this setup would work?

Any information anyone can give would be great.

Many t

Hi,

It should work and actually we can mark a hard disk as SSD in Storage Space with PowerShell cmdlet.

Hi everyone,

Can anyone tell me if I can make use of a PCIe SSD device in order to make use of the auto-tiering functionality within Storage Spaces?  I would prefer to a PCIe SSD device rather than a standard SSD, but I can't seem to find any information anywhere if this setup would work?

Any information anyone can give would be great.

[ ... ]

1) Storage Spaces (non-Clustered)

There should be no problem using PCIe (or newly appeared NVMe) flash with Storage Spaces. You can even "force" flash with device that does not report "flash" about itself. See:

Storage Tiering Step-by-Step (Jose Bareto Blog)

http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2013/08/28/step-by-step-for-storage-spaces-tiering-in-windows-server-2012-r2.aspx

Storage Spaces (Tiering)

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2013/10/21/storage-spaces-how-to-configure-storage-tiers-with-windows-server-2012-r2.aspx

(see usage of a Set-PhysicalDisk with overriding MediaType, that may be useful if your PCIe flash is not reported as SSD)

For more information about Set-PhysicalDisk see:

Set-PhysicalDisk cmdlet

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848651.aspx

2) Storage Spaces (Clustered)

NO WAY. Currently Clustered Storage Spaces cannot do anything except SAS. See:

Deploy Clustered Storage Spaces

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj822937.aspx

Disk bus type

The disk bus type must be SAS. Note  We recommend dual-port SAS drives for redundancy. Storage Spaces does not support iSCSI and Fibre Channel controllers.

Alternatively you can use third-party software that DOES support any types of disks to build a Shared Nothing Clusters with any type of storage (does not rely on SAS built-in LUN locking and multi path mechanisms).

For example see:

StarWind Virtual SAN: Shared Nothing Cluster with only 2 hosts

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san/

(there are others like SteelEye & DataCore)

3) Storage Spaces Shared Nothing

That would be part of upcoming Windows Server 10. See:

Windows Server 10: Storage Survival Guide

http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2014/12/19/windows-server-technical-preview-storage-survival-guide.aspx

Good luck :)