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Configuring Storage Spaces for NVMe caching of SSDs using powershell

ayi

I am installing Server 2019 Core on a Dell server. These are the drives I have:

Get-StoragePool -IsPrimordial $true | Get-PhysicalDisk | Where-Object CanPool -eq $True

DeviceId FriendlyName                         MediaType CanPool OperationalStatus
-------- ------------                         --------- ------- -----------------
4        Dell Express Flash PM1725a 1.6TB AIC SSD       True    OK
1        DELL PERC H740P Adp                  SSD       True    OK
2        DELL PERC H740P Mini                 SSD       True    OK
3        Dell Express Flash PM1725a 1.6TB AIC SSD       True    OK

DeviceIds of 3 and 4 are NVMe drives while DeviceIds of 1 and 2 are SSDs. Using powershell, what commands do I need to use in order to create a Storage Pool that uses the NVMe drives as caching for the SSD drives?

It looks like I will need a combination of New-StoragePool, Add-PhysicalDisk, and New-VirtualDisk, but I am not sure what options to use to accomplish my goal.

Do the NVMe drives need to be set as SCM for MediaType?

I also want to use ReFS as the filesystem because it will be used for Veeam backups.

ayi

Multiple things are wrong in this setup:

1) RAID controller is not supported for Storage Spaces. The fact that you can use it to create Storage Pool and Virtual Disk doesn't mean that it will be supported by Microsoft. In any case, any MSP or MVP and Microsoft Support will point to RAID controller if something went wrong with storage...

The possible workaround - change the mode of the RAID controller to HBA.

2) NVMe caching is only available on Storage Spaces Direct (SDS sharing nothing solution). Even if you can add NVMe as one of Storage Tiers as a workaround it doesn't mean it is going to be supported.

As a possible workaround, you can change media type of the SSD drives to HDD and create Automated Storage Tiering using Storage Spaces where NVMe drives will act as performance tier, while the SSD's will act as capacity tier.

3) ReFS in Windows 2019 is terrible... Don't use it for backups (yes, we know that Veeam is recommending this file system), especially if it just a single backup storage repository. Just open Veeam Community forum and read some scary stories about ReFS. ReFS is still raw FS, use the stable NTFS...