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I recently purchased a shiny new server running 2012 Standard R2 and want to add four 512GB SSDs for my VMs. I would like to set them up in RAID 10, but I'm not quite figuring out how to do so within Windows. I'm hoping the answer is simple and I'm just missing it.

Any directions you guys have would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

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    - You can create a striped volume in Windows (RAID 0) or you can create a mirrored volume in Windows (RAID 1), but you can't create a striped mirrored volume in Windows (Raid 10).
    – joeqwerty
    Dec 17, 2015 at 21:42
  • For best results, do this at the raid controller hardware level, rather than the OS level.
    – Joel Coel
    Dec 17, 2015 at 21:48
  • Thanks for the suggestions. Here's what I did while waiting for a response: I created a storage pool with all 4 drives. I added a virtual disk (mirrored) using the pool. I have 1TB of data to work with so I presume it mirrored and striped. That's pretty much what I want, right?
    – SenorAmor
    Dec 18, 2015 at 14:55

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From my experience raid arrays are generally set up within an application from the hard drive controller's manufacturer. For example I have an HP server and they provide and application called HP Smart Storage Administrator. This will provide a hardware based RAID provided by the hard drive controller.

Within the windows OS I believe you can create a software based RAID by running diskmgmt.msc. Within disk manager you can create two mirrored volumes and then one striped volume from the two mirrored volumes to simulate raid 10. I have never done it this way and would not suggest a software based RAID to hold VM's. If the host OS is corrupted then the raid may not be recoverable, whereas with a hardware based raid the OS and the RAID are separate.

Lastly if at boot time if a hard drive controller is configured to operate in RAID (set in bios) then most manufacturers have a firmware based application that can set up the hardware based RAID.

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  • Hardware based RAID cards require you to use a special application or bios booted program however software based raid can be done within an OS Jun 11, 2018 at 10:51

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