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 […]
Storage Spaces Direct
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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 = […]
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. […]
We have been using Intel SATA SSDs in server settings for a very long time now. We have yet to hit one server, all virtualization platforms, exhaust any of the SSDs we’ve deployed. We’ve also been deploying HGST SAS SSDs in production for a very long time now. Same story, […]
Reading this article on Serve The Home this morning: Kingston DC450R SSD Released SATA and 3.84TB Maximum. The Kingston DC450R SSD is being released with “Data Center Series” on the sticker. But, it does not have power loss protection (PLP) so how could this be? The suspicion here is that […]
A conversation on the S2D Slack channel brought about a realization that we are on the cusp of one of the bigger technology shifts in the CPU industry in a very long time. Since Intel incorporated Core into their Intel Xeon line many, many years ago where we saw a […]