Windows Server 2012r2 Cluster Question

[Nikolithebear]

Hey all,

 

Currently I'm working on a project to link two of my servers together in a cluster and combine their storage.  Then after combining the storage I wanted to partition a large amount of it out for a NAS.  I'm fairly novice when it comes to advanced windows server stuff so any help would be appreciated.  Server Info below

 

Dell R710

2x E5530 8 Core With Hyper Threading

24gb Ram

4x 1 TB HDD

 

Dell R410

1x L5540 4 Core With Hyper Threading

8gb RAM

4x 2TB HDD

 

Note:  I'm also putting a 10Gb NIC in both and configuring a path for quick transfers.  

[Electronics Wizardy]

so you need 2012r2 data center and storage spaces direct to do this.

 

What raid card in the systems?

 

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/storage/storage-spaces/storage-spaces-direct-overview

 

You can then make a volume and share it with smb

[Nikolithebear]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

*snip

Dell Perc6i's I believe.  I'm unsure whether to run them as individual disks or RAID them into RAID5 for each set on the servers. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Nikolithebear said:

Dell Perc6i's I believe.  I'm unsure whether to run them as individual disks or RAID them into RAID5 for each set on the servers. 

since you have a perc 6i that can't do jbod, id make them a raid 5 on both.

 

OOPS you need server 2016 datacenter to do this, you can't do this on 2012r2. Server 2012r2 doesn't have a good distrubited storage solution. You have DFS, but its pretty bad.

[Nikolithebear]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

 

As a student I can get my hands on the datacenter version so dont worry!  

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Nikolithebear said:

As a student I can get my hands on the datacenter version so dont worry!  

put 2016 on them and get to work

 

https://msandbu.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/setting-up-storage-spaces-direct-on-windows-server-2016-tp3/

 

basically you then setup volumes when you need storage.

 

Id probaly suggest you setup them up as 2 seprate nas's and just manage the storage between them.

[Nikolithebear]

 

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

 

Cool!  Ill start working on it tomorrow, for now its time for bed.  Thanks for the help! 

[leadeater]

When the hell did Storage Spaces Direct get changed to 2 node minimum, I remember when it was 4 then the big news when it was 3 but 2??!?! How did I not know.

[leadeater]

@Nikolithebear

Officially your supposed to use HBA controllers so the storage bus for the disks is SATA or SAS, using a RAID card in RAID mode will set the bus mode to RAID. You'll have to do some manual overriding to get it to work but that's fine, I've done it.

[lil_killa]

Yeah, not sure how long its been but since September, 2 node minimum has been a thing. You need 4 node to be able to use the multi tier volumes and erasure coding though.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, lil_killa said:

Yeah, not sure how long its been but since September, 2 node minimum has been a thing. You need 4 node to be able to use the multi tier volumes and erasure coding though.

So if you want a useful Storage Spaces cluster it's still 4 . Surprised multi-resilient virtual disks wouldn't be supported, erasure coding is fully expected due to how that works.