Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

As SDDC (Software-Defined Data Center) becomes more and more popular in the past two years, Software-Defined Storage (SDS), as an important building block, is increasingly used by data centers of various industries and sizes. As one of the SDS vendors, Microsoft, facing this cake, of course, is unwilling. Starting from Windows Server 2012, Microsoft launched its SDS solution-Storage Space. This version still needs to be built on the basis of shared disk enclosure (JBOD). Like other mainstream SDS vendors, its purpose is to help users simplify architecture, simplify management and achieve flexible expansion on demand by adding various disks in JBOD to one or more storage pools and dividing storage space from the storage pool for single host use or multiple hosts sharing. Server connectivity to JBOD enclosures also eliminates the need for expensive RAID cards, requiring only certified SAS cards, and advanced features such as data protection and performance optimization are implemented on a software-defined basis for each storage space. SDS is really easy to deploy, easy to use and easy to scale compared to traditional SAN usage and maintenance.

In Windows Server 2016, this feature has changed a lot. First of all, from the perspective of architecture, enterprise users can still configure up to 16 servers into an S2D cluster using MS Failover Cluster feature. Each server no longer needs external JBOD, but directly contributes the configured internal disks to form a storage pool. Each server is able to "see" the physical disks of other nodes through the virtual Software Storage Bus. This architecture is simpler than its predecessor and is aligned with VSAN and Nutanix products. It is recommended that redundant 10 Gigabit network cards supporting RDMA be used for node and node network connections to improve security and reduce data exchange latency. If the server nodes contributing storage also run services, this is the popular hyperconverged architecture (HCI). Alternatively, the storage nodes and service nodes can be separated, and the storage space can be shared with the previous service nodes in the form of CIFS. The two layers of architecture can be expanded as needed. Second, the disk of the server can support PCIe NVMe SSD, SSD and HDD. By default, S2D will use the disk with the best performance as the Storage Bus Cache, providing read/write cache for each node and also serving as the metadata storage place of the storage pool. This functionality can be done automatically at configuration time or by manual specification. For example, if the server is configured with the above three types of disks at the same time, PCIe SSD will be used for storage bus cache, SSD and HDD disks will be used for capacity tier. It is worth noting that with Powershell commands, you can see that there are three types of SCM/SSD/HDD specifications for disk types, where SCM refers to "Storage Class Memory", which is the next generation of extremely high-performance storage devices in the JEDEC standard. Windows Server 2016 can support NVDIMM-N in this standard, while vSphere may have to wait until next year to support it. NVDIMM-N is simply to put DRAM chips and NAND Flash chips in the same memory module, supplemented by large capacitors or batteries for data protection, when the system accidentally loses power, through large capacitors or batteries, the data in DRAM can be directly moved to NAND memory chips, thus achieving near-permanent preservation, which is transparent to the operating system and applications. The system can not only enjoy the data write delay of tens of nanoseconds of DRAM, but also obtain the data protection after accidental power failure, and truly achieve the purpose of eliminating the performance bottleneck of storage in the system. Third, in Windows Server 2012/R2, the standard version can also support Storage Space, but in W2016, only the data center version includes S2D functionality. In terms of data protection, in addition to 2-way mirror, 3 way-mirror, Erasure Coding (single parity/dual parity) can also be supported to improve disk space utilization. In addition, as with previous versions, Microsoft has put many of the S2D's advanced configuration and parameter adjustment functions only in Powershell, which should be noted for users who are accustomed to using graphical interfaces for configuration management. The following experiments are also performed in Powershell. Storage Space/S2D each has its own hardware compatibility list, so be sure to check carefully whether your hardware supports it before deployment. For example, S2D currently only certifies HBA330 for Dell Server HBA cards. For details, please refer to Microsoft's official website below:

Storage Space Hardware Certification List:

https://www.windowsservercatalog.com/results.aspx?& bCatID=1642&cpID=0&avc=10&ava=0&avt=0&avq=0&OR=1&PGS=25&PG=9

Hardware requirements for S2D configuration:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-spaces/storage-spaces-direct-hardware-requirements

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