Simply test Windows s2d (1) in a vsphere environment

With the two years of the SDDC (software-defined data center) becoming more and more hot, software-defined storage (SDS), which is an important building block, is increasingly being used by various industries and data centers of all sizes. Microsoft, one of the SDS vendors, faced this cake of course not to the people, starting with Windows Server 2012, Microsoft grandly launched his SDS solution--storage Space. This version also needs to be built on a shared disk enclosure (JBOD), just like other major SDS vendors, with the goal of partitioning the various disks in JBOD into one or more storage pools, and then dividing the storage space from the storage pool (Storage Space) to a single host or multiple host sharing process, to help users streamline the architecture, simplify management and achieve on-demand flexible expansion. Server-attached JBOD enclosures also no longer require expensive RAID cards, but only certified SAS cards, and advanced features such as data protection and performance optimization are implemented in a software-defined manner based on each storage space. SDS does demonstrate ease of deployment, ease of use, and ease of expansion, compared to traditional San usage and maintenance.

        to Windows Server 2016, this feature has changed a lot, first of all, from an architectural standpoint, enterprise users can still use MS Failover The cluster feature configures up to 16 servers into a single s2d cluster, each server no longer requires an external JBOD, but instead directly contributes the configured internal disks to make up the storage pool. Each server is able to "see" the physical disks of other nodes through the virtual software Storage bus. Such architectures are more streamlined than their predecessors, and the Vsan and Nutanix products tend to be consistent. Network connectivity for nodes and nodes it is recommended to use an RDMA-capable redundant Gigabit network card to improve security and reduce the latency of data exchange. If the server node that contributes the storage also runs the business, then this is also the hot Hyper-converged architecture (HCI), and the storage node and the business node can be separated, and the storage space is shared with the previous business nodes in CIFS mode, and the two-tier architectures are scaled separately on demand. Second, the server's disks can support PCIe NVMe SSDs, SSDs, and hdd,s2d will default to the best-performing disks as storage bus caches (Storage bus cache), providing read/write caching for each node, as well as storing the metadata for the storage pool. This can be done automatically at configuration time or by manual designation. For example, the server is configured with the above three types of disks, then the PCIe SSD will be used to store the bus cache, SSD and HDD disk will be used for the capacity layer. It is worth noting that with the PowerShell command you can see that there are scm/ssd/hdd three types in the designation for the disk type, where SCM refers to "Storage Class memory", which is the next-generation extremely high-performance storage device in the JEDEC standard, the current Windows Server 2016 can support the nvdimm-n in this standard, and vsphere may need to wait until next year to support it. Nvdimm-n simply is to put the DRAM chip and NAND flash chip in the same memory module, supplemented by large capacitance or battery to do data protection, when the system accidentally power down, through the large capacitance or battery, can be in the DRAM data directly into the NAND memory chip, This allows for near-permanent storage, which is transparent to the operating system and applications. So that the system can enjoy almost the dram dozens of nanosecond level of data write delay, but also can get the data protection after accidental power-down, really achieve the purpose of eliminating the performance bottleneck of storage in the system. Third, in Windows Server 2012/R2, its standard version can also support storage Space, but to W2016, only the dataThe S2d feature is included in the Heart edition. In terms of data protection, in addition to 2-way  mirror, 3 way-mirror, Erasure Coding (single parity/dual parity) can be supported to increase disk space utilization. In addition, as in previous versions, Microsoft has placed many of S2d's advanced Configuration and parameter tuning functions in PowerShell only, and is aware of the need for users who are accustomed to using graphical interfaces for configuration management. The following experiment is also basically done in PowerShell. Storage SPACE/S2D has its own hardware Compatibility list, so be sure to check whether your hardware supports it before deployment. For example, s2d current authentication for Dell Server HBA cards is only HBA330. For specific information, refer to the following Microsoft website:

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

S2D configuration needs to meet the hardware conditions:

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

This article is from the "servers in the Cloud" blog, so be sure to keep this source http://yddfwq.blog.51cto.com/4016432/1924552

Simply test Windows s2d (1) in a vsphere environment