Storage Spaces Direct Server 2016 Step By Step

I would like to try the new windows 2016 storage spaces direct technology as a dedicated scale out file server cluster so i ordered 4 x mellanox connectx4 dual port 10 gbe nic for them.

Storage spaces direct server 2016 step by step.

Storage and compute in separate clusters. The following steps are done on a management system that is the same version as the servers being configured. Storage spaces direct was designed for two distinct deployment options. If you want to learn more about it this one is a really good starting page.

Storage spaces direct is a new share nothing scale out storage solution developed by microsoft that will be soon available as part of windows server 2016. I had tried this once before in windows server 2016 cluster hosts and ran into a few odditites that i was never able to get around with the time i had to play around with it. Configure storage spaces direct. Drives s m a r t are green so i would like to utilize those servers as a highly available dedicated storage cluster.

The converged deployment option also known as disaggregated layers a scale out file server sofs atop storage spaces direct to provide network attached storage over smb3 file shares. To test this solution using windows server 2016 technology preview 5 i ve decided to run the entire solution. For instructions to set up networking for storage spaces direct see windows server 2016 converged nic and guest rdma deployment guide. The process of configuring windows server 2019 storage spaces direct s2d in vmware vsphere was simpler that i thought it would be as i expected to see errors or other unexplained behavior.

Great blog by the microsoft team about storage spaces direct in windows server 2016 the best part is that the video is based on dell poweredge r730xd servers.