The Virtual Disk Service (VDS) is a dead communications API (application program interface) that was replaced in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 with the new Storage Management API.
VDS was a COM service which is a loose way to allow programs communicate. You can think of COM as in e-mail system. One program may try to talk to another using COM but they are not actually talking directly to each other. COM is a bridge between disparate systems.
Developers should only be using the WMI (Windows Management Interface) called Storage Management API to talk to and request information from storage systems including Microsoft Storage Spaces.
Here is a useful chart from Microsoft that explains which tool can be:
| Access | VDS | WMI | DiskPart | DiskRAID | Disk Mgmt GUI | PowerShell | Storage Spaces Control Panel |
| Storage Subsystems | Yes | Yes | n/a | Yes | n/a | Yes | n/a |
| Basic Disks | Yes | Yes | Yes | n/a | Yes | Yes | No |
| Dynamic Disks | Yes | No | Yes | n/a | Yes | No | No |
| Storage Spaces | No | Yes | No | n/a | No | Yes | Yes |
In most instances the Virtual Disk Service does not need to be running. It is not quite deprecated, but nothing new should have been using it for about a decade, so it is really only for old apps and old operating systems like Server 2008R2, Server 2012 and Server 2012R2.
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