Windows 8

Chancellor Alkorin

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I don't even understand that comment. What's complicated about Windows, ever?
 

Lenas

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Anyone who says Windows is hard is just confirming how bad they are at using computers.
 

Zodiac

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Anyone seen benchmarks for Win 8 storage spaces vs raid 0? Also wondering if storage spaces allows TRIM to function. My google fu is failing me.
 

The Ancient_sl

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I just dont like how they made everything complicated.
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Chancellor Alkorin

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Anyone seen benchmarks for Win 8 storage spaces vs raid 0? Also wondering if storage spaces allows TRIM to function. My google fu is failing me.
My understanding is that TRIM is a driver-level thing. When Storage Spaces calls on that disk (as part of an active set), it should be using TRIM if the disk supports it. Could be wrong but I'm fairly sure this is correct.

That said, I tried using Storage Spaces on Server 2012 to replace FlexRAID and it was absolutely horrible speedwise, even in comparison to FlexRAID RT (I usually run Snapshot). I can only assume that it would run with speeds comparable to a software RAID 0 if set up that way (striping without parity), which you can do. Caveat emptor: It's exactly like RAID 0, so if you lose a disk in the pool (no matter the size), you're more than likely screwed.
 

Frenzied Wombat

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My understanding is that TRIM is a driver-level thing. When Storage Spaces calls on that disk (as part of an active set), it should be using TRIM if the disk supports it. Could be wrong but I'm fairly sure this is correct.

That said, I tried using Storage Spaces on Server 2012 to replace FlexRAID and it was absolutely horrible speedwise, even in comparison to FlexRAID RT (I usually run Snapshot). I can only assume that it would run with speeds comparable to a software RAID 0 if set up that way (striping without parity), which you can do. Caveat emptor: It's exactly like RAID 0, so if you lose a disk in the pool (no matter the size), you're more than likely screwed.
Software based RAID on a server? You my friend are either really brave, are given a paltry budget, or hopefully simply using this on your home p0rn server. Maybe the technology has evolved since I last played with it, but I still have nightmares of trying to recover customer Windows 2003 servers with dynamic disks and software based raid.

For the TRIM stuff, run this on your drive and it will tell you whether trim is working:http://files.thecybershadow.net/trimcheck/
 

Chancellor Alkorin

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Software based RAID on a server? You my friend are either really brave, are given a paltry budget, or hopefully simply using this on your home p0rn server. Maybe the technology has evolved since I last played with it, but I still have nightmares of trying to recover customer Windows 2003 servers with dynamic disks and software based raid.
Paltry budget it is, and it's at home as well. I would never, ever do this with someone else's data, and I run nightly backups.

That said, FlexRAID isn't nearly as dangerous as Windows software RAID, given that the most you can lose is a drive's worth of data (which can be easily recovered if you have the appropriate amount of parity) since it isn't striped, and you can read the data off the individual drives if FlexRAID isn't running. I can't even imagine trying to recover data from a Storage Spaces drive, though. Actually, I just imagined trying to do so and nearly had a heart attack. I'm a bit curious as to why anyone would ever use Storage Spaces in production, ever, given its limitations, without a foolproof backup in place.

Edit: The technology hasn't evolved, by the way. Server 2008 R2 is just as horrible when trying to recover off a software RAID.
 

Frenzied Wombat

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Paltry budget it is, and it's at home as well. I would never, ever do this with someone else's data, and I run nightly backups.

That said, FlexRAID isn't nearly as dangerous as Windows software RAID, given that the most you can lose is a drive's worth of data (which can be easily recovered if you have the appropriate amount of parity) since it isn't striped, and you can read the data off the individual drives if FlexRAID isn't running. I can't even imagine trying to recover data from a Storage Spaces drive, though. Actually, I just imagined trying to do so and nearly had a heart attack. I'm a bit curious as to why anyone would ever use Storage Spaces in production, ever, given its limitations, without a foolproof backup in place.

Edit: The technology hasn't evolved, by the way. Server 2008 R2 is just as horrible when trying to recover off a software RAID.
Yeah, I'm sure Storage Spaces is another abomination that when the shit hits the fan and all your data is suddenly missing, you see some queer error in the event log that then points you to some obscure MS KB article that basically explains all sorts of little known limitations and basically states that you are fucked. They shouldn't even let you create a software mirror, dynamic disk, or storage space outside of maybe Small Business Server.
 

Zodiac

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I did some more googling and TRIM is working in storage spaces but it seems Alkorin is correct - it's slower than software raid. I was looking into it because I got a bunch of 64GB SSDs that I want to throw in my machine and install just games on them for the lulz.
 
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storage spaces has me intrigued, largely due to to the new filesystem, ReFS. refs in mirrored array to self heal like zfs while being able to add individual drives is appealing. wish it had dbl parity and to be able to autoheal from it. btrfs seems experimental still. i'd trust software raids more than hardware to find out errors a la zfs. it's said you'll eventually be able to boot from refs but it was designed for integrity, hence you'll see lower benchmarks. though, a quick google shows btrfs performing slowly as well.
but yeah, maybe in an updated generation or 2 SS might be useable. it's horribly documented
 

Chanur

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So the rumors are Windows 8.1 this year? I think I'll just on board then .
 
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As far as I know, you can do double parity with SS. I didn't try as the performance was absolutely shitty with a single parity drive.
don't think so.

more on mirrors: "When a mirror space is formatted with the Resilient File System (ReFS), Windows offers automatic data integrity maintenance. This is a layer of resiliency is above and beyond the resiliency achieved from maintaining multiple data copies to tolerate drive failure."

dunno how much bad sectors a ss mirrored disk can take before, i hope, it unmounts.
 

gogusrl

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I just installed it on my desktop computer and I'm having really slow speeds when connecting with RDP from my W7 laptop at work to my W8 at home. It's not an internet problem, I have ~50 mbps between them with ~5 ms ping.
 

Chancellor Alkorin

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don't think so.
Tempted to try now. I'll throw a Win8 VM together later and see if it lets me do double parity on a mirror.

dunno how much bad sectors a ss mirrored disk can take before, i hope, it unmounts.
If it behaves anything like a dynamic disk mirror, it definitely won't unmount for you. It'll just bitch to the event log until the problem goes away, or the system touches a bad sector that it can't recover from and blue screens.
 

Chancellor Alkorin

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Yep, you're correct, you can't do double parity in Windows 8. You can in Server 2012.

You can do a triple mirror in Win8, though, provided you have enough drives to do it. It's a 67% loss of drive space, though, so... ouch. Also, I don't get the 5 disk requirement for a three-way mirror. Why wouldn't it be 3 disks?

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Frenzied Wombat

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if you are talking about it being slow to connect and not a slow interface, we had the same problem at the office and opened a case with MS. Try stopping the routing and remote access service on one or both computers if it's started. Won't go into detail but it's a bug in win8 when connecting to/from win 7 machines

I just installed it on my desktop computer and I'm having really slow speeds when connecting with RDP from my W7 laptop at work to my W8 at home. It's not an internet problem, I have ~50 mbps between them with ~5 ms ping.