VM on Pool drive

locus123 · January 2012

Right now I have 3 VM's hosted on my WHS server. By default, they're using the C:\Users\Me\Virtual Machines directory. Is anyone running VM's off a pooled drive with M4 installed? The performance while copying/moving files seems to be phenomenal now - I'm wondering if a VM would be fine.

I had quickly tried to put a VM on a pool drive a few days ago and I remember receiving a "file structure doesn't support large files" error or something along those lines. Before I charged ahead to troubleshoot/duplicate I figured I'd check to see if anyone else was running VM's.

(As a side note, if you have enough memory for VM's, then VM Workstation 8 has a Shared VM's function and runs as a service natively. I changed the port from the default 443 to 500 just so it didn't conflict. Now any computer in the house with Workstation 8 can view and mange the VM's remotely. Seems to be a great solution - better still if I can put it on a pool drive, cause I'm almost out of room on that 60Gb C: drive!)

Philmatic · January 2012

I try not to have anything stored on the pool that is constantly written to. You're just asking for trouble and reduced performance due to it constantly balancing the pool and performing duplication passes.

I'd probably try to take one of your drives and pull it out of the pool, then have your constantly written files there. I do that now with my usenet downloads.

Jolly · January 2012

Sadly, this is a known issue, that Covecube seems to have not responded to

I'd like to be able to store my VM's on a duplicated folder!

DrTone · January 2012

I agree with Philmatic, pooling technology is the wrong place for VMs. Buy a dedicated disk or 2 if you want redundancy for your VMs.

locus123 · January 2012

I completely agree that we shoudln't be using the pool for VM's for redundancy and I purposely turned it off for my (if it worked, but it didn't) VM folder.

I'd like to use the pool just for simplicity. It doesn't make sense to dedicate a 1Tb drive for 1 or 2 VM's that take up maximum 20Gb combined. We're not talking about a production VM environment here, this is casual home use.

I have other usenet and torrent files being written to one of the pooled folders (not duplicated) and it works like a charm.

DrTone · January 2012

Did you not start with a system drive large enough so that your

drive has lots of extra space to play around? I never add the second half of my system drive (D: ) to the pool just for these purposes. Plus it's always raid 1 just to save me a reinstall if the system drive fails.

datageek · January 2012

I agree that simplicity is good, and it doesn't always make sense to dedicate a whole drive (or the D partition) for non-pool application data such as VM images, as this might waste space that could be used for the pool.

However, bear in mind that you can use a drive for both pool and non-pool storage, they coexist happily. I have my VM images stored in a non-pooled folder on a data drive that is also included in the pool, so there is no wasted space, and they don't use up any of the limited space on the C drive. That's one of the many nice things about Drivepool ; unlike RAID, or Microsoft's upcoming Storage Spaces technology, you don't have to dedicate the whole drive to the pool.

So, IMHO it would be nice to put VM images on the pool for simplicity, but it doesn't cause me any problems holding them outside the pool for now.

Paaland · January 2012

I'd like to use the pool just for simplicity. It doesn't make sense to dedicate a 1Tb drive for 1 or 2 VM's that take up maximum 20Gb combined. We're not talking about a production VM environment here, this is casual home use.

You don't have to only use a drive for pooled shares even if the drive is part of the pool. I've got my VM's on a drive that is also part of the pool. But the files does not reside inside a pooled share. So it's something like this:

G:\ServerFolders\ <= Non pooled shares (Client Backups mainly)

G:\PoolPart.08e22aef-bdce-45e5-81ef-52d5bf0f5995\ <= Pooled shares

G:\VMWare\ <= Non shared, non pooled files

In the VMWare folder I've got my vmware machines.

locus123 · January 2012

I must be missing something simple here. I have all my drives added as part of the pool. Trying to replicate what Paaland recommended, I can't create a folder that is not a pooled folder. If I use the "Add a Folder" or "Add a folder to the pool" they both create a pooled folder. I can't find a way to create a non-pooled folder.

Also, is it recommended to keep the Client Backups outside the pool? Why? Currently I have them as part of the pool, and duplicated.

DrTone · January 2012

Map a drive letter to a physical drive using Drive Management.

Paaland · January 2012

@locus123

My bad. You cannot create non shared, non pooled folders via the Dashboard. You'll need to remote desktop into the server and use standard windows explorer (file manager). I assumed you had knowledge of how to do this since you had managed to install vmware.

OtisPresley · January 2012

If possible, you should dedicate entire drives to VM's if you have more than 3 or 4 powered on at a time. Running VM's produce pretty steady disk I/O, which will slow things down when you start adding more VM's to the mix, or when you start transferring files to that disk. This is why I have two smaller drives in a RAID 0 for VM's only, for better performance, and I back up the VM files once per week and Hypervisor OS once per day to a backup disk. This way, my VM's always run nice and fast, because they do not have to compete with file transfers for disk I/O.

locus123 · January 2012

I have 3 2TB disks - I can't dedicate an entire one for VM's, that's just a waste. I don't really care about performance, as long as it works well enough.

So what you're saying is I need to partition a drive, then use part of it as a drive that is not added to the pool for the VM's? Is that the recommended solution? (Given my situation of course - I understand adding an entire drive would be optimal, but that's not feasible)

datageek · January 2012

@locus123

No need to partition your drive, although of course during WHS installation your system drive will have been partitioned into C and D partitions, with the WHS 2011 OS living on the C partition. Your other two drives can remain as single partitions.

As I said, pooled and non-pooled folders happily co-exist on the same drive (and same partition/volume). Drivepool manages pools using folder structures only, it does not reserve entire drives or partitions for its exclusive use. If you follow Paaland's advice (which is similar to what I've done for my setup) you'll be fine. In summary:

RDP in to the server (i.e. this can't be done via dashboard if you're missing drive letters)
In Windows Explorer, check that the drive you want to use has a drive letter (I think by default Drivepool will setup drives without drive letters). If not, open Computer Management (Start-> type "Computer Management"), select Disk Management, right click the drive, choose "Change drive letter and paths..." and "Add" a drive letter of your choice
In Windows Explorer, click on the drive and add a new Folder, call it "VM" or whatever.
In VMWare (or whichever virtualisation tool you're using), move the VM into the new folder.

Step 3 can be done in Dashboard using the "Add a folder" task, but only if you have a drive letter as otherwise the wizard won't be able to see the drive.

locus123 · January 2012

Thanks for the explaination datageek. I must have a bug of some kind because I've tried that - hence why I keep asking what I'm sure looks like a simple answer to everyone else!

I actually have drive letters for all my drives. They were assigned when I added them and formatted, and I didn't realize I didn't need them. No big deal. When I use the "Add a folder" task, Drivepool creates creates a pooled folder (regardless whether the folder exists already or not).

I guess as a workaround I could just create the folder and assign my VM's to it - it just won't show up in the Dashboard if I do that.

Is anyone experiencing this problem? Both "Add a folder" and "Add a folder to the Pool" create pooled folders?

locus123 · February 2012

Scratch that - id10t error. The "Add a folder" link works if you create a folder that's not on the pooled drive. Duh!

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