I think I need some education... I googled but cannot really find my way through.
I have 2x 1.75TB SSDs and 4x 3.64TB HDD.
The concept of Storage Tiers appealed to me and I thought I'd be perfectly set up for it. I guess I was wrong (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/275652/2x-175tb-ssd-4x-4tb-hdd-but-creating-a-volume-give.html). While I awaited a possible answer, I started to 'experiment'.
So I made 2 pools, both 1x SSD + 2x HDD. I wanted to make a virtual disk (formatted with ReFS) on PoolSet01 with data redundancy so that 1 disk could crash without any data loss. The only Storage Layout that does this (in the GUI) is Mirror. The wizard states:
Data is striped across physical disks, creating two or three copies of your data. This increases reliability, but reduces capacity. To protect against a single disk failure, use at least two disks (three if you're using a cluster); to protect against two disk failures, use at least five disks.
I'm using 3 disks, so I should be good, right? Wrong. I get a red error banner telling me:
There is not enough physical disks of each media type to support the storage layout. Select a different layout.
I then read this (Server 2012) article: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/7bf23161-d104-4fa5-befb-383998ea7edf/windows-server-2012-r2-rtm-quotthere-are-not-enough-physical-disks-of-each-media-type-to?forum=winserverfiles which states that I'd need at least 2 SSDs... So I tested that: 2x SSD + 2x HDD Storage Tier with Mirror. That also fails (not supported).
I then tried 2x SSD + 4x HDD as a storage tier with mirror. Again, after selecting the size (maximum) I get the error above.
Lastly, I tried to make a Virtual Disk without the Storage Tier option enabled and instead chose for Parity (with 2x SSD + 4x HDD) and the maximum allowed size. I got the same error once again.
So clearly I'm not understanding wtf am I doing...
So wtf should I be doing? :)
What can be done? What can't? Ideally, I'll have the 2 SSDs for hot data and the 4x HDD for cold data and it should be OK for up to 2 disks to crash at the same time. All disks can be used for 1 pool.
Any advise? Help? Please? :))
Thank you!