Windows 2016 - Storage Pool - Expand Physical Disks

Question

_{Tuesday, May 16, 2017 10:14 PM}

Hello all,

I have a Windows 2016 VM (Gen2) running on a Hyper-V 2016 Server.

To that VM I attached 4 x 256Gb VHDx, a pool was created with them (1024Gb capacity). I then created a virtual disk (Simple, 4 columns), 512Gb in size.

Went ahead and resized the VHDx to 512Gb each, and while the VM detects the disk size increase, the storage pools fails to do so. I'm starting to think Storage Spaces does not support expanding the disks in this manner, but I can't find any documentation to support this. 

TL;DR: Is it possible to expand a Storage Spaces Pool's "Physical Disk"?

Thanks

All replies (6)

_{Friday, June 2, 2017 5:51 PM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

Based on my personal experience, the answer is "No". You cannot resize the pool in this way. You can only extend the pool by adding more physical / virtual disks and running the below PS commands:

adding disk to the pool:

Add-PhysicalDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName <PoolName> -PhysicalDisks<physicalDiskObject> -Usage AutoSelect

resizing the storage tier:

Resize-StorageTier –FriendlyName <VDName> -Size <NewVDSize>

resizing the volume:

Resize-Partition –DiskNumber <DiskNumber> -Size <NewVolumeSize>

Hope it helps.

_{Wednesday, May 17, 2017 6:10 AM}

Hi,

Do you mean you want to expanding a VHDX Disk on Hyper-V?

If so you could check the article below.

https://virtualizationreview.com/blogs/everyday-virtualization/2012/12/expand-vhdx-disk.aspx

Please Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.

In addition, I suggest you could also confirm this in hyper-v forum

Best Regards,

Mary

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_{Wednesday, May 17, 2017 8:06 AM}

Hello Mary,

Thanks for the reply, but that is not my question.

I'm not asking whether or not I can resize a VHDx, or how to do it. I'm asking whether or not Storage Spaces supports the expansion of its "physical disks". Those physical disks just happen to be VHDx files, that's all.

Server Manager > File and Storage Services > Volumes > Storage Pools > Physical Disks.

I suspect it's not possible, but can't find any literature to substantiate this.

Thanks. 

_{Wednesday, May 17, 2017 8:46 AM}

Hi A Sol,

Thanks for your feedback.

>Went ahead and resized the VHDx to 512Gb each, and while the VM detects the disk size increase, the storage pools fails to do so

My misunderstanding before. Based on my understanding, storage pool expansion doesn't supported this scenario.

Since according to the requirements the storage space, it supports Serial ATA (SATA) or Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) connected disks, optionally in a just-a-bunch-of-disks (JBOD) enclosure.

RAID adapters, if used, must have all RAID functionality disabled and must not obscure any attached devices, including enclosure services provided by an attached JBOD

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831739(v=ws.11).aspx

Best Regards,

Mary

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_{Wednesday, May 17, 2017 2:39 PM}

Hello again, Mary.

I think there is still a misunderstanding. This is a VM with VHDx files attached to it. As far as its concerned all the VM sees are disks attached to the SAS bus. I went as far as making sure it sees the media type as HDD.

Now, I know it's possible to "expand" the disks by removing the physical disks, and attaching a new one. That's how it's handled when working with physical servers and attached storage, but in this case I have a Simple Virtual Disk running on top of that Storage Space Pool, that makes it impossible to remove the "physical disks". 

Since the VM's OS does see the drive size increase, I'm hoping for a way to tell Storage Spaces "hey, your disks are now size X" via powershell or something. I did try running Update-StorageProviderChache, but no luck with that.

At this point I fully expect this to be an Storage Spaces issue, as in, it does not support that function. What's weird is that I could've swear this was possible with Windows 2012 R2. I'll check and report back. Maybe it's a Windows 2016 glitch, or removed functionality. 

_{Thursday, May 18, 2017 1:54 AM}

Hi A Sol,

I will be still trying to search some related information about server 2016 both in website and our internal database about this and will keep you posted if there is any useful information.

Thanks for your understanding.

Best Regards,

Mary

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