S2D ssd + nvme for capacity

Hello Thank you for your question and reaching out. Adding drives : Adding drives, also known as scaling up, adds storage capacity and can improve performance. If you have available slots, you can add drives to each server to expand your storage capacity without adding servers. You can add cache drives or capacity drives independently at any time. Note : It is strongly recommend that all servers have identical storage configurations. To scale up, connect the drives and verify that Windows discovers them. They should appear in the output of the Get-PhysicalDisk cmdlet in PowerShell with their CanPool property set to True. If they show as CanPool = False, you can see why by checking their CannotPoolReason property. Within a short time, eligible drives will automatically be claimed by Storage Spaces Direct, added to the storage pool, and volumes will automatically be redistributed evenly across all the drives. At this point, you're finished and ready to extend your volumes or create new ones. If the drives don't appear, manually scan for hardware changes. This can be done using Device Manager, under the Action menu. If they contain old data or metadata, consider reformatting them. This can be done using Disk Management or with the Reset-PhysicalDisk cmdlet. Reference : https://video2.skills-academy.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-spaces/add-nodes

Hi, Thank you for your answer I was more concerned with how to do it without any problems associated with it. SSD and NVMe drives have the same media type -> SSD. Will automatic data relocation not be a problem since these drives have different performance? Will I be able to create volumes on selected drives (only on SSD or NVMe)?

Hello @Sebastian Kotlimowski

Thank you for the clarification. When adding NVMe drives to an existing S2D cluster, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure a smooth and successful process:

1. Make sure that the NVMe drives are compatible with your existing hardware and meet the minimum requirements for S2D. You can check the hardware compatibility list (HCL) to ensure that the NVMe drives are supported.

When adding NVMe drives to an existing S2D cluster, the automatic data relocation feature will automatically move data between the SSD and NVMe drives based on the performance characteristics of each drive. This is done to ensure that the most frequently accessed data is stored on the fastest drives. However, you can manually control the data placement by creating storage tiers and pinning specific data to specific drives.

When creating volumes, you can choose to create them on specific drives (either SSD or NVMe) by using the -MediaType parameter with the New-Volume cmdlet. For example, to create a volume on only the NVMe drives, you can use the following command:

New-Volume -StoragePoolFriendlyName "S2D Pool" -FriendlyName "NVMe Volume" -FileSystem CSVFS_ReFS -Size 1TB -MediaType NVMe

This command creates a new volume named "NVMe Volume" on only the NVMe drives in the "S2D Pool" storage pool.

It is recommended to perform a backup of your data before adding NVMe drives to your S2D cluster, as there is always a risk of data loss during the process.

1. Finally, it is recommended to test the performance of your S2D cluster after adding the NVMe drives to ensure that the performance meets your expectations and that there are no issues with the data relocation process. You can use tools like Diskspd or CrystalDiskMark to test the performance of your storage subsystem.

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