Users Guide

A new VD called exampleVD1 was created in storage pool MyPool1. This VD was a Three-way mirror so

the ResiliencySettingName attribute was set to Mirror and the PhysicalDiskRedundancy attribute

was set to 2. Because storage tiers are used, the disk space sizes of the tiers are specified as part of the

VD.

New-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName “exampleVD1” -StoragePoolFriendlyName “MyPool1” -

ProvisioningType Fixed -ResiliencySettingName Mirror -PhysicalDiskRedundancy 2 –

StorageTiers $ssd_tier, $hdd_tier –StorageTierSizes 400GB, 40TB

NOTE: Dell recommends you to create Storage Spaces no larger than 10 TB. For more information,

see the Dell Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces Support Matrix.

Column count

The column count indicates the number of physical disks that Storage Spaces stripes data across. The

column count has a direct correlation to performance as increasing the column count allows more

physical disks to be striped and accessed in parallel during reads and writes.

You can only configure column count at VD creation by using PowerShell. You cannot set the column

count by using the graphical user interface (GUI). Creating a VD in the GUI selects a default column count

that may not be optimized for your solution. After a VD is created the column, count cannot be changed.

For a VD that uses storage tiers, the column count of the SSD tier and HDD tier must be identical.

Run the following PowerShell command for creating VDs with a specified column count.

New-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName <vdName> -StoragePoolFriendlyName <poolName> -

ProvisioningType Fixed -ResiliencySettingName <Simple| Mirror| Parity> -

PhysicalDiskRedundancy <1|2>

-NumberOfColumns <#ofColumns> -StorageTiers

<ssdTierObject, hddTierObject> -StorageTierSizes <ssdTierSize , hddTierSize>

For example,

A new VD is created called exampleVD2 in the storage pool MyPool1. This VD is a Two-way mirror. The

column count is six for this VD so the NumberOfColumns attribute is set to 6.

New-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName “exampleVD2” -StoragePoolFriendlyName “MyPool1” -

ProvisioningType Fixed -ResiliencySettingName Mirror -PhysicalDiskRedundancy 1

–

NumberOfColumns 6 –StorageTiers $ssd_tier, $hdd_tier –StorageTierSizes 100GB,

15TB

Table 5. Column count requirements

Resiliency type Minimum number of

columns

Column-to-disk

correlation

Minimum number of

disks

Simple 1 1:1 1

Two-way mirror 1 1:2 2

Three-way mirror 1 1:3 5

Parity 3 1:1 3