Hello everyone.

I hope you can help me with my question.

I need a Windows 10 VM (or Windows server VM) with a very large second Virtual Disk mounted to it.  I am running software under the VM that requires direct access to the local files (so it cannot be via an UnRaid share).

The primary vDisk is located on the SSD cache disk and I am happy with this.  However, as I start to fill the VM’s 2nd vDisk with data, it seems to stop when the UnRaid vDisk reaches the capacity of the first physical hard disk.

I was expecting the vDisk to keep growing and to span onto the next physical disk within Unraid.  Is this possible, or an I asking too much or doing something wrong?

 

Further information on my configuration:

I have installed UnRaid (as a trial for the moment) and managed to configure 9 disks (formatted to xfs) totalling 21TB.  I have also added two parity disks to this.

The VM is configured to use the following vDisk for the OS  /mnt/user/domains/Windows 10/vdisk1.img.  This “domains” share has the Cache set to “prefer”, so it is stored on the SSD.

I created a share called “domans-noncached” and set the cache option to “No”.  All disks are allocated to this share and the High-Water allocation method is also selected.  I have also set the minimum free space for this at 400MB.

The VM was then configured to use the second 17TB VirtIO vDisk in the following location /mnt/user/domains-noncached/Windows 10/vdisk1.img

 

This 2nd vDisk was automatically allocated to a 3TB physical disk to start with and grew to the capacity of that disk. 

The VM is now stuck in a paused state and I cannot force it to start again.  I have read that VMs can pause when disk space is an issue, and suspect that this is the case for me.

The 3TB of data on the vDisk is not needed at this stage, so I can easily delete it and start again if an alternative method is better.

 

If a vDisk is limited to the size of any physical hard disk within the array, perhaps I need to look at other options. 

I could create many separate vDisks (one for each physical disk) and then create large a striped volume within the Windows VM.  But this is obviously over complicated and not ideal.

 

I hope this is a questions that might interest some of you and also something you can help with.

 

Many Thanks,

Steve

Each disk in the parity array is an independent filesystem. Each file exists completely on a single disk. Folders can span (user shares) but files cannot. 

 

Unclear why you can't use shares. 

 

You could have a multidisk pool as btrfs single or raid0 or other and a file could be as large as the whole pool. 

That is great thanks.  That makes perfect sense thankyou and i will give the btrfs multidisk pool a try now.

 

The database software we use is old so I need the data to appear as local for it to work correctly.  But i think the long term option will be to replace this software so we can use the UnRaid storage directly (which i really like).  I have over 2 decades of experience in managing HP Proliant servers with Windows and the standard RAID storage.  UnRaid looks refreshingly simple and perfect for a low spec server while providing full control over how the hardware is used.

 

Many Thanks, Steve