unable to add the Virtual disk number of column

Question

Hi All,
We have decided to replace / delete the existing physical disk. Is it possible to change the number of column in virtual disk where it is configured in storage pool.

It is a 5 node cluster and the disks are configured in storage pool. certainly, customer committed to delete / decommission the extra disk which is allocated in the storage pool. While removing the physical disk it throws error that another virtual disks are in use. Therefore, it is not possible to remove the physical disk.

The virtual disks are configured as simple and the number of column is 2, the physical disk size is 2 number and 2 TB size. Based on the physical disk it is configured G, H & I drive.
Unfortunately, it is not allowing to delete the physical disk due to G & I drive in place where it has 400 GB space occupied.

Could anyone help me to change the virtual disk number of column and how to add the physical disk in virtual disk.

Answer 1

Hi,

Thank you for your posting!

1) Firstly, >to change the virtual disk number of column,

As far as I know, we can't change the number of columns once the virtual disk is created. You may need to rebuild. These articles may be helpful for you:

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-sg/storage-md1420-dsms/dsms_bpg_pub-v2/column-count?guid=guid-68f002f4-bc8b-4992-a1cc-b99767fbc86a&lang=en-us

(Please note: Information posted in the given link is hosted by a third party. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy and effectiveness of information.)

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11382.storage-spaces-frequently-asked-questions-faq.aspx

2) Based on your descriptions, I suppose you would like to remove one of your physical disks in the storage pool of your cluster but the virtual disks are still working, so you cannot remove the physical disk. Besides, since your VDs were created as simple, data is striped across physical disks. Thus removing any one of the physical disks will damage data. In this sense, you may have to backup your files in those VDs and delete them, then you are able to remove your physical disk. More practice can be found in this blog in which there is a issue similar to yours:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dbbf317b-80d2-4992-b5a9-20b83526a9c2/storage-spaces-remove-physical-disk?forum=winserver8gen

3) For Windows Server, removing existing physical disk(s) from a Storage Pool is straight forward. Once the disk is removed it will automatically rebuild any data written on the disk to the other disks. If the capacity exceeds the possibility of removing an existing disk it will fail. It will also fail if the disk layout is set to for instance parity and you only have 3 disks and you remove 1. In addition, Windows Server has a very neat Remove Disk menu option - the OS then takes care of emptying the disk and it tells you when it is safe to remove it:

-Under Physical drives for the storage pool you want, click/tap on the Prepare for removal link for the drive you want to remove. The drive will now be listed as Preparing for removal.

-Leave it until the drive is ready to be removed. This could take several hours, depending on how much data you have stored there.

-When the drive is listed as Ready to remove, click/tap on its Remove link.

Above all, my suggestion is: backup your files in your VDs and try to use 3), if it does not work for you, delete the VDs and then remove your physical disk. Then you can add your new physical disk in the cluster. Just follow the steps in this article:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/failover-clustering/adding-disk-to-cluster/ba-p/371257

After you add your new physical disk, you can try to create your VDs and build your column, but this time, I suggest you not to use "simple" VD in Storage Spaces, the same issue can occur to you next time.

Thank you for your support!

Best regards
Joan

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Answer 2

@Prabuyuvaraj Ravichandran ..

We have decided to replace / delete the existing physical disk. Is it possible to change the number of column in virtual disk where it is configured in storage pool

Answer : No. of columns cannot be changed for an existing Virtual disk and you will have to delete the virtual disk and recreate . Before any deletion you will need to take the backup.

Since you said that it is simple Volume and you said that 2 Physical drives . Then the column count is 2 . That basically means that at any point i would require 2 PD to write data to it. What can be done is : Add one Physical drive to the pool . Then Mark that old drive to be retired (Any one) . Start a repair against that vdisk and i should be see the virtualdiskfootprint going down againt that PD to zero. And all the chunks should have moved to the new PD. Bingo .. once you see that Remove-physicaldisk against that old drive.

it should work .

It would be best if you test this in your lab first.