Allows creation of expandable virtual data pooling

Microsoft has provided details on a new capability of its upcoming Windows 8 release. The feature, Storage Spaces, provides virtualized storage for improved scaling, resiliency and efficiency. It does so by allowing physical disks to be organized into dedicated "storage pools" and then let the user create virtual disks, or "spaces."

Storage Spaces are created when a user takes two or more physical drives and virtually "pools" them. Unlike traditional systems, such as RAID, the drives don't have to be the same size. They can also be connected by different means such as USB, SATA, or SAS. The total amount of storage capacity is not fixed at the time the space is created. Windows 8 uses a technique called "thin provisioning" that reserves space only when it's needed. It also reclaims space if data has been deleted. Using this process, physical space can be added to the virtual space as capacity is needed. In the background, Storage Spaces optimally manages the capacity of each of the physical disks within the storage pool, for all the spaces carved out from the pool.

To give some level of reliability, Storage Spaces mirrors all data on two different physical disks. It carves out blocks or in "slabs" of capacity for mirroring data in increments of 256MB. If one disk fails, a good copy is still available. Once the physical drive is replaced, the data is again mirrored.

While Storage Spaces does employ the RAID concepts of mirroring and striping, its implementation has different objectives. Read performance for both mirrored and striped spaces is optimized similarly to RAID 0 or RAID 10 implementations, however.

Windows 8 is expected in the second half of this year.

By Electronista Staff