Standalone Storage Spaces backup

[ferrus]

Can anyone confirm the support status of backing up Windows VMs, with Standalone Storage Spaces (not S2D) configured?
We're considering deploying a new VM file server, with Storage Spaces in Simple-mode (no-parity).
The only mention of it I can find, is regarding issues with clustered S2D servers and snapshot timing - so only Agent/NAS backups being supported.

I don't believe this is an issue with standalone servers. Is anyone using this in production?

[Andreas Neufert]

Can you please clarify one thing.
Do you want to add a Storage Space (non S2D) as storage space for a Hyper-V Server that runs a VM on it in the end?
=> This is supported scenario.

Or do you want to build a VM that uses Storage Spaces within this single VM?
=> As the different disks for this are just normal VMDKs, you can restore the server and use things like Instant Restore
=> For File Level Recovery and any granular recovery I think we do not support this. The reason is that there is no simple way of mounting this Storage Space automated to our mount server for data restore. Of cause it could be possible with a lot of overhead but it is a feature request for a later version. Last time I checked, Windows did not support storage spaces within VMs, but this might have changed in the meantime.

[Andreas Neufert]

Storage Spaces need storage HBAs that do not run any raid or additional caching. The virtual adapters in the virtualization do not fit this requirement.

Some background information: https://aidanfinn.com/?p=14489

[ferrus]

Thanks for the replies, Andreas.

No File-Level Recovery is a big disadvantage, for a File Server!
I could do the occasional file restore using Instant VM Restore, but don't think it would be scalable for the whole team.

For info, I think the MS support has changed with regard to Storage Spaces on VM guests:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windo ... rect-in-vm

That link refers to S2D, but as documentation on Standalone Storage Spaces remains (as ever) very sparse, it's likely that it covers the much less complex requirements of standalone installations.
PVSCSI is the only requirement, on the VMware side.

[Andreas Neufert]

Based on the shared webpage I think that storage spaces is not supported within VMs as it list the specific controller without additional abstraction layer demand.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windo ... age-spaces

I did not find any other statement that would suggest that this is an allowed/supported configuration.

Maybe an advisory case at Microsoft will help you to find out if it is supported or not. Anyway from our side we do not support Storage Spaces within VMs today for file level and other granular recovery methods (based on file access) and it is unlikely that we will build this as it we understand from Microsoft documentation is not supported.