Windows 10: VM failures in HCI environment with Storage Spaces Direct S2D

We are experiencing issues in our HCI environment running Storage Spaces Direct S2D, which consists of 2 nodes directly connected via two 10 Gb/s SFP+ interfaces. Each node is also connected to the LAN via 4 Ethernet interfaces. The nodes are located in separate sites, referred to as Site A and Site B.To configure dynamic quorum, we use a File Share Witness hosted on a third server located in Site B, alongside one of the cluster nodes.During two separate incidents, Site B experienced power outages that led to the shutdown of one cluster node and the witness.All VMs were running on the node i

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VM's using VMware on W10 Host with Storage Spaces randomly fail

Hi folks

Running some VM's on W10 Host (x-64 PRO) with VMware workstation Rel 14 I get random failures if the VM's are on storage spaces. The same VM's work perfectly when on external SSD's or internal standard (non Storage space area) HDD's.

The failures are seemingly totally random and could be something to do with the underlying file system of the storage space array -- don't know enough about Ms's implementation of storage spaces so can't say.

I suggest though if using Storage spaces for your VM's and using VMware I'd back them up to standard devices in case of failure.

I've sent log and report to VMware (fully licensed for VMware workstation Rel 14).

Message comes up ………,vdmk failed and the VM hangs. hast to be forceably powered off from the VM menu. It shows one of the virtual disk areas has had some I/O problem -=-it's not always the same number - it's random. intermittent and 100% unpredictable so I've given up the idea of storage spaces for Virtual Machines currently.

Strange thing is the OTHER way around - running Windows VM's also on VMware workstation 14 on a Linux host running RAID 0 no problems whatsoever when the VM's are on the RAID 0 arrays.

So the identical VM's fail on windows but not Linux -- hope VMware can sort this out - or Ms need to fix problems with Storage spaces.

Haven't sent a report to Ms as I can bet they'll say it's VMware's problem not ours.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Increase Space on Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct

We have 2 identical servers configured with S2D in a mirrored layout for cluster storage. The storage pool is made up of 560GB 15K SAS drives and SSDs. There are no spare physical slots left in either of the servers.

We are starting to run low on storage and have some larger 2.5TB 10K SAS drives that we were thinking of adding to the pool. Is this possible and how would it be done? Can we just remove 1 or 2 disks from the current storage pool, then add the larger disks
and then expand or is there more to it?

 

Migration of 2012R2 VMs from a 2012R2 DC server stack into Azure HCI stack

My old VM stack hosts are running 2012R2 DC with VMs running 2012R2.

I now have a new Azure HCI 2022 server stack that I'm moving the 2012R2 VMs to (will upgrade VMs OS later). Every 2012R2 VM now tells me to activate Windows. How do I fix this?