This one was like finding a needle in the haystack as the Veeam forums had no mention of the actual fix for the following error: Failed to create snapshot (Microsoft CSV Shadow Copy Provider) (mode: Hyper-V child partition snapshot) Details: Writer ‘Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer’ is failed at ‘VSS_WS_FAILED_AT_PREPARE_SNAPSHOT’. The […]
Clusters
14 posts
When we set up a greenfield Active Directory Forest and Domain we do the following in Group Policy: New Group Policy Object (GPO) Linked & Enforced at the domain Level: Default Domain Security Policy Enable Remote Desktop Inbound: Allow users to connect remotely by using Remote Desktop Enable the Windows […]
We’re in a pickle and things are really stressful. Documentation is lacking so who wants to jump into a cluster troubleshooting situation when all we see is: C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1 C:\ClusterStorage\Volume2 ETC ETC In a busy cluster environment the number of CSV folders can be quite large. What we do is once […]
We are setting up a new 2-node AMD EPYC Rome S2D (Storage Spaces Direct) cluster and hit a bit of a snag with the new version of RUFUS that lists the following options when formatting the drive: Windows 11 with TPM/SecureBoot Windows 11 without TPM/SecureBoot Our cluster nodes refused to […]
There are many ways one can go about setting up the networking for an Azure Stack HCI (ASHCI)/Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) cluster. TL;DR Our rule of thumb is to start with four 25GbE ports via two network adapters for multiple nodes requiring switches or even in smaller […]
This is what one of our Proof-of-Concept (PoC) rack enclosures looked like before we were finished buttoning things up: Four Node Storage Spaces Direct Cluster with Mellanox 40GbE RoCE Fabric In the end, we did a decent job of wrapping and coiling the massive 40GbE cables and the 250V PDU […]
Server and workstation boards have had SlimSAS 8x connectors for dual NVMe drive setups for quite a long time now. ASRock Rack EPC621D6U-2T16R (BTO Board) The SlimSAS SFF-8654 connector is to the right of the PCIe x16 slot. When they started appearing on server and workstation boards, we began trying […]
This process may be needed as the cluster grows due to the Health Service creating a somewhat small disk to start with. The following PowerShell will expand the Cluster Performance History Cluster Disk as the initial configured size may not be enough down the road. Variables to change: $VDNewSize = […]
While it’s great to look to an all NVMe deployment as the ideal the budgetary side of things can put a constraint on the configuration we deploy. No matter if we’re deploying a cache to capacity solution with SATA SSD for cache to spinning rust for capacity or NVMe for […]
We’ve taken to deploying a Cloud Witness for almost all of our Windows Server based clusters whether Hyper-V, Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), or Scale-Out File Server. When logging on to the Azure Portal this morning we were prompted to check out a number of different areas by the Azure Advisor. […]