Server 2019 Storage Spaces Fails to create vDisk?

[KungFury84]

Hello, So i currently have the following Server 2019 box

Motherboard: SuperMicro X11SCA-F 
CPU: Intel Xeon E-2186G (6 Core, 12 Theards @ 3.80GHz) 
RAM: 64GB DDR4 2666mhz ECC 
System Drive: Samsung 970 Pro 512GB 
HDD Pool: 8 x 6TB SATA Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives 
PSU: SilverStone 600W Strider 80 Plus Titanium
 

Currently Server 2019 is refusing to create a Virtual Disk for my storage pool. I know this is most likely a logic error on my behalf but I have a feeling there is a small setting or limitation i can not find. The error the wizard returns is as follows

Failed to create virtual Disk – Not Supported
 

Extended information
This storage pool does not have sufficient eligible resources for the creation of this specified virtual disk.

Recommended Actions:
- Choose a combination of FaultDomainAwareness and NumberOfDataCopies (or PhysicalDiskRedundancy) supported by this storage pool.
- Choose a value of NumberOfColumns that is less than or equal to the number of physical disks in the storage fault domain selected for the virtual disk.
 

The steps i used to create the Pool as as follows
1. Named the Pool and gave it a description 
2. selected all 8 physical disks and created the Pool

This worked fine and the final pool had a capacity of 43.7TB
 

The steps i used to create the Virtual Disk
1. Named the virtual disk and gave it a description (create storage tiers on this virtual disk was grayed out and unchecked)
2. "Enable enclosure awareness" was grayed out and unchecked
3. Selected "Parity" for storage layout
4. Selected "Dual Parity" for resiliency settings
5. Selected "fixed" for provisioning type
6. Selected "maximum size" for virtual disk size
7. Clicked "Create" and then returned mentioned error message.
 

What I'm trying to achieve
I'm trying to add all eight drives to a pool and then create a virtual disk that has a 2 drive fault tolerance similar to that of a RAID6 setup. 

Thanks in advance,

[leadeater]

@KungFury84

Check the disks have the correct Media Type after being added to the pool, it's common for them to be listed as Unknown. You can only check this and change the Media Type after you add disks to a pool.

 

Get-StoragePool -FriendlyName StoragePool1 | Get-PhysicalDisk | select FriendlyName, MediaType, BusType, Usage

Change out StoragePool1 with your pool name.

[KungFury84]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

@KungFury84

Check the disks have the correct Media Type after being added to the pool, it's common for them to be listed as Unknown. You can only check this and change the Media Type after you add disks to a pool.

 

Get-StoragePool -FriendlyName StoragePool1 | Get-PhysicalDisk | select FriendlyName, MediaType, BusType, Usage

 Change out StoragePool1 with your pool name.

I recreated the pool (you StoragePool1 as the name this time) and it returned the following

FriendlyName MediaType BusType Usage
------------- --------- ------- -----
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, KungFury84 said:

I recreated the pool (you StoragePool1 as the name this time) and it returned the following

FriendlyName MediaType BusType Usage
------------- --------- ------- -----
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select
              HDD       SATA    Auto-Select

Hmm seems they are all the correct media type.

 

Give this a try

New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName Storagepool1 -FriendlyName TestVD -ResiliencySettingName Parity -Size 10GB -ProvisioningType Fixed -MediaType HDD -PhysicalDiskRedundancy 2

 

[Salv8 (sam)]

sometimes hdd's with bad sectors or some crap on them from the manufacturing process can cause something like this

since they are WD hdd's, the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics software from WD should allow you to see whats happening, give them a once over with the software (yes each one, be sure that the drives are working before they are put into production)

if that didn't work use the erase option, this will zero out the drive (replace all data on the drives with zeros, effectively destroying anything else on them), any crap on them should be removed

 

if you are still having the problem then it may lie someone else, for example the HBA controller on a third party HBA card or the SATA controller on the MB itself.

even then maybe take out off of the drives except two and create a storage space volume, if it works, do it again but with an extra drive then last time (making it 3 drives instead of 2), do this until you come across a drive thats giving you the problem

 

if you are still having the issue then try with different drives that you know for sure don't have problems as a test of the hardware, again if it's still got problems

your software may not be working correctly, if your system has RAID capbilitys then use that as a test, if it fails, it's hardware, if not it's software

if it is software, check everything, drivers, configuration, windows compatibility, the lot. windows is very finicky about this and something small can set something like this off

if it's hardware, check each part of the process (the drives, the HBA/SATA controler, the MB etc), if you find one with a problem, return it if possible and get a replacement (check the replacement just in case)

 

hope this helped (yes i know i need to format it better, i put spaces between the paragraphs, YoUr WeLcOmE!!!!!)

[KungFury84]

On 2/16/2019 at 9:25 PM, leadeater said:

Hmm seems they are all the correct media type.

 

Give this a try

New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName Storagepool1 -FriendlyName TestVD -ResiliencySettingName Parity -Size 10GB -ProvisioningType Fixed -MediaType HDD -PhysicalDiskRedundancy 2

  

I think this has fixed it,

I that PS command and it worked without any problems so i started increasing the size gradually until i got to the maximum size the GUI reported in previous attempts (29,736GB)

These are the end naming scheme i ended up going with too.
 

PS C:\Users\Administrator> New-VirtualDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName ZeusPool -FriendlyName ZeusVDisk -ResiliencySettingName Parity -Size 29735GB -ProvisioningType Fixed -MediaType HDD -PhysicalDiskRedundancy 2

FriendlyName ResiliencySettingName FaultDomainRedundancy OperationalStatus HealthStatus Size FootprintOnPool Storag
eEffic
iency

------------ --------------------- --------------------- ----------------- ------------ ---- --------------- ------
ZeusVDisk Parity 2 OK Healthy 29.04 TB 43.56 TB 66.66%
 

I then extended the virtual disk to pick up the remaining space and left me with a 29.1TB virtual disk.
 

Now my question is why did this work?

[KungFury84]

12 hours ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

sometimes hdd's with bad sectors or some crap on them from the manufacturing process can cause something like this since they are WD hdd's, the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics software from WD should allow you to see whats happening, give them a once over with the software (yes each one, be sure that the drives are working before they are put into production) if that didn't work use the erase option, this will zero out the drive (replace all data on the drives with zeros, effectively destroying anything else on them), any crap on them should be removed

 

I was thinking this earlier just for peace of mind as these drives where shipped to me.

I have now started the process of extended testing each drive and so far only tested one (takes about 9 hours each, so 3 days of just testing right there) They all passed the quick test which is promising so hopefully they all pass the extended tests. 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, KungFury84 said:

Now my question is why did this work?

Not sure, I think there has potentially been a bug introduced in to the GUI process as I know someone else (@LinusTech) is having very similar issue. My older build of Server 2016 GUI works however by the sounds of it the latest OS build and Server 2019 doesn't. Microsoft and other people in industry all recommend to only configure Storage Spaces using PowerShell and honestly I only ever do it that way.

 

To really get to the bottom of the issue a premier support ticket would have to be logged with Microsoft but that costs money or uses allocated support time from your support agreement so it's not something I would do as we don't use Storage Spaces at work for any real production usage, plus I don't have the issue so I'd first have to find a way to re-create it.

[Salv8 (sam)]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

My older build of Server 2016 GUI works however by the sounds of it the latest OS build and Server 2019 doesn't.

i can verify this, did this as a test with 2019 and it failed with the parity option, other options worked fine....

i redid this on 2016 and had no issues getting it to work.

since the powershell still works the GUI only requires a small patch which can be sent out with no fear that it will break server operations, it should be fixed soon (hopefully, this is Microsoft, they've don't stupid shit like this before)

[KungFury84]

I'm actually glad it was just a bug in the 2019 GUI in the end (Kinda bad for Microsoft and they should probably get on that ASAP) Seeing as PS is pretty much in everything these days I think I'm going to have to brush up my PS knowledge more. Thanks for your help guys

[romode]

For everyone that is experiencing this problem and cant fix it with powershell.

 

My setup is a Hyper-V Standalone Server which is running WIndows Server 2019.

Because its a virtualized Server it will use virtual disks. On those virtual disks the media type is not set its just undefined. This was the problem for me, as soon as i set the media type of the drives i could create the virtual disk using powershell.

 

Hopefully it helps someone this took  me way too long to figure out