Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) : installing and Configuring on 2 VMs


Windows Server 2016 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2022

In this article, we will see how to set up Storage Spaces Direct under two VMs.

S2D is the solution hyperconverged of Microcrost arrival with Windows Server 2016.

I also took advantage of this lab to use Admin Center.

Prerequisites

  • Have a domain controller
  • Two servers (VM) under Windows 2016 Datacenter with 4 disks dedicated to S2D.

Due to the use of a cluster with two nodes, the storage pool will be mirrored.

With two servers, you can only create two-way mirrored volumes (compare with distributed RAID-1).

The 2 nodes of the cluster were installed without GUI.

Installing roles

From the Admin Center interface, install the clustering feature. From the navigation menu, go to Roles and Features 1, check Failover Clustering 2 and click Install 3.

honolulu install features

Search for dependencies

honolulu install features 2

Check box 1 to allow automatic restart and click Yes 2 to start the installation.

honolulu install features 3

You can follow the status of the installation in the notification area.

honolulu install features 4

You must also install the file server role. To do this, type the following command in PowerShell on the server.

Install-WindowsFeature -Name File-Services

Repeat steps 1 to 5 on the second server.

Clustering

Now that both are ready, you have to create the cluster.

The powershell commands that follow are to be executed by connecting to one of the cluster nodes.
The commands will have to adapt according to your environment (name of the servers, ip …).

For ease of management, you can add the Clustering Management Console to your domain controller.

Clustering test

Test-Cluster –Node LAB-S2D-N1,LAB-S2D-N2 –Include “Storage Spaces Direct”
Test-Cluster

This command will generate a report on the validation of the nodes.

test cluster result

Creating the cluster

New-Cluster -Name LAB-S2D-CLUSTER -Node LAB-S2D-N1,LAB-S2D-N2 -NoStorage -StaticAddress 172.16.0.120
creation cluster

Check the creation of your cluster with the following command:

Get-Cluster
get-cluster

Enabling S2D on Cluster.

Enable-ClusterS2D
enable-clusters2d
enable-clusters2d

Confirm cluster creation

confirm create cluster s2d
creation du cluster

The cluster is now ready.

cluster s2d result

Configuration

To facilitate cluster administration, you can install the clusteting management tools on a server.

Cluster overview

Pools of disks: One finds the disk pool 1 to create during the clustering which gathers all the available disks 2 on the nodes of the cluster.

pool s2d

Physical disks that make up the s2d pool.

Disque physique Pool

Enclosure 1: The servers 2 that make up the cluster are considered disk enclosures.

s2d boitier disque

Creating a volume

Graphic mode

Creating a volume in graphical mode requires first creating a virtual disk and then creating the volume.

From the cluster management interface click New Virtual Disk 1, select the pool 2 and click OK 3.

create vidsk

Create the virtual disk (the captures present the steps for creating the virtual disk).

Creation of the volume, how for the creation of the virtual disk the catches present the creation of the volume.

The volume is visible in the cluster disk list.

Liste des diques cluter

Right-click on the disk to add it to the cluster.

Liste des diques cluter

Return to Admin Center in the Files menu, the volume should be visible.

Honolulu fichier cluster

PowerShell

Enter the following command (to be adapted according to your configuration).

New-Volume -StoragePoolFriendlyName “S2D*” -FriendlyName vDisk2 -FileSystem CSVFS_ReFS -Sizes 10GB –CimSession LAB-S2D-CLUSTER
volume en cours de creation

The volume is created.

confirmation creation du volume

The volume is also visible from the GUI. It is also directly scaled to the cluster.

résultat volume powershell

Complement to help you understand or set up an S2D cluster.




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