This article explains briefly about the design and steps required to deploy a highly available scale-out-file server (SOFS) on clustered storage spaces using Windows Server 2012 R2.
Note: Here we are using only a single JBOD. But there are several storage spaces certified JBODs available in market (eg: DATAON) which are enclosure aware. That means when you are using multiple JBODs together, you will have data redundancy at the JBOD level too.
- JBOD is connected to both file servers using shared SAS HBA connectors
- MPIO is enabled on both servers (SERVER 01/ 02)
- Make sure JBOD disks are available to both servers
- In this case we have total 24 disks (6 SSD and 18 SAS HDD)
- Create new storage pool
- By default all available disks are included in a pool named the primodial pool
- If primodial pool is not listed under storage spaces, then it indicates that the storage doesn't meet requirements of storage spaces
- If you select primodial pool, all available disks will be listed under physical disks
- Select option create new storage pool
- Give it a name
- Select physical disks you want to be in the pool
- Hot spares can be configured too at this stage
- Verify new storage pool is listed under storage pools
- Next step is to create virtual disks (these are not vhdx files, they call called spaces)
- Now select the new storage pool that you have just created in step 5
- Click on tasks, select new virtual disk
- Give a name
- Select the storage layout (Mirror, Parity, Simple)
- Choose provisioning type (Thin, Fixed)
- Specify size
- Now create volumes
- Right click the virtual disk (space) that you have just created in the previous step and select new volume
- Select server name and then the virtual disk name
- Specify volume size, drive letter, file system type, allocation unit size and volume label
- Create failover cluster using the 2 file servers
- Provide a cluster name
- Volumes that you created in step 8 will be listed as available volumes
- Add those as cluster shared volumes
- Now it appears in C:\ClusterStorage\
- Next step is to create a highly available SOFS
- On failover cluster manager - roles - new clustered role - file server - file server for scale out application data (SOFS)
- Provide client access point name (eg: SMB-FS01)
- Right click on SOFS role in failover cluster manager and select add shared folder
- Choose SMB share server applications
- Provide a name (eg: DATA01)
- Local path to share (C:\ClusterStorage\volume1\shares\DATA01
- Remote path to share (\\SMB-FS01\DATA01)
Now you have a highly available file share (\\SMB-FS01\DATA01) to store your virtual machine files which is built over clustered storage spaces.
Reference: Microsoft
Reference: Microsoft