Storage Space Direct in Server 2016

[CougTek]

Storage Space Direct, a much improved version of Storage Space compared to the version in Windows Server 2012. It's Microsoft version of Software Defined Storage.

I'm considering it as an alternative to a SAN for our next architecture. It would allow us to have an all flash storage pool and the maintenance is a lot simpler than with most SAN, especially our main one (a 3PAR StoreServ).

There are many guides online on how to do it. Anyone here has tried it yet?

 

[CougTek]

I'm so proud to be the spark behind such a vivid thread.

Anyone using VMWare's VSAN then?

 

[ddrueding]

I'm interested in Storage Space Direct, but haven't played with it at all.

 

[CougTek]

Didn't notice before, but S2D requires Datacenter edition, which drives the price up tremendously with M$ new pricing scheme. S2D therefore is much less appealing than what I thought.

Also, there's no dedup when using ReFS within the VM. No data locality on the nodes either, hence the strong suggestion to use NICs with RoCE or iWarp and DCB-capable switches. Even then, since a lot of data goes thru the network, latency is higher than on a Nutanix cluster.

I'm waiting for a Nutanix proposal next week. Hopefully, the premium won't be too significant. Compared to using Powershell for everything in M$ world, Nutanix's Acropolis with Prism is dead easy to deal with.