We are taking a look at using Windows Storage Spaces that is built in to Win10 and Server2016. Has anyone used this before? Good? Bad? Indifferent? It seems like a good thing to be able to add storage to an existing "parity space" but the downside is I have never been crazy about any kind of software RAID. I would like to hear some opinions. Sorry if this has already been discussed before.
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Any Opinions On Using Windows Storage Spaces?
Josh Hendricks
Aug 08, 2018I haven't seen actual performance specs for Windows Storage Spaces as a surveillance drive, but everything I've read says that write performance on a parity space is terrible - which is to be expected for a software raid as you know.
My opinion is that it should be avoided for constant write-heavy operations, but it's worth experimenting with to see what the limitations are on any given system.
As an aside, I'm actually curious what is preventing software raids from using hardware acceleration. I know the operations are different than video encoding/decoding, but given that storage is ubiquitous and even most consumer workstations support some level of RAID, I'm surprised there isn't hardware acceleration built-in to modern CPUs. I wonder if it's because there's no standardization for how parity calculations are done?
U
Undisclosed #2
Mar 11, 2021I'm not sure what, if anything, has changed in storage spaces since this post. I am working on a camera system for a small business. They have a system in place and were recording to a single 8TB drive, which is working fine. However, I am in the process of a small upgrade at this location and this is a good time to improve the storage setup. It has been running on this drive for about 6 years and there was a close call with the drive a few weeks ago. The drive is being replaced, but I'm not sure if I should swap it out with another 8TB (or larger) drive or if this is a good time to add a few 8TB drives (possibly 3) and use storage spaces to create a large virtual drive and have the system record to that. It would allow for increased space for recording with fault tolerance. I do know that one of the options in storage spaces is parity, but the other options are not listed as parity. Maybe if the parity option is avoided, performance won't be that bad....not sure.
Side note- I'm not sure if replying to this post bumps it to the top of the discussions, I figured I would try this, first, before starting a new topic.
Edit- Yes, it bumped it to page 1.
Josh Hendricks
Mar 11, 2021I haven't heard anything lately that speaks well of storage spaces with parity but this isn't an area I spend a lot of time in so it would be great to hear from someone working with storage on a regular basis.
The challenge as I understand it is that a checksum needs to be generated for the writes, and having a large/fast cache only helps so much on a system that is literally always writing new data. If you can't handle the checksum generation at a rate at least as fast as the incoming data, it doesn't matter how large or fast the cache is - it will fill and then writes will slow down.
Without a hardware RAID, you rely entirely on the CPU for checksums which it is not purpose-built for. So you're holding that information in RAM longer, and asking the CPU to constantly be crunching that data which means it has less time for other things.
Software raid is incredibly convenient though, and it's such a ubiquitous need that it's hard to imagine we aren't doing a lot better at software raid-6 equivalence by now.
UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #3
Mar 11, 2021If it were me I would do a 2-drive RAID 1. If you need more space than 8TB get 10TB, 12TB, 16TB, or whatever size drives.
Here is an article where someone tested performance and there was no dropoff between a single disk and RAID 1
Windows Storage Spaces Performance – Simple vs Mirrored vs Parity – Michael's Tech Tips
U
Undisclosed #2
Mar 11, 2021UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #3
Mar 11, 2021The Windows Storage Spaces RAID. I've never used it with surveillance to be honest, but RAID 1 is not complex and I think it would work fine.
U
Undisclosed #2
Mar 11, 2021I agree and I think that is the route I'm going to take.
Thanks!
Mike Dotson
Mar 15, 2021One item not yet mentioned is how long it will take to rebuild from a failed drive.
We know that software RAID takes longer to rebuild vs the hardware type.
This is especially true if parity based RAID arrays are in use due to the computations needed in the CPU.
For software RAID, stick with RAID1 as was already mentioned.
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