In this blog post in the series we will have a look at some of the different Vendor Designs that have been made available.

Let’s first start with our good friends over at Intel who have a very close partnership with Microsoft and the Storage Platform Teams.

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/windows-server-2016-implementation-guide.pdf

This Implementation guide pretty much uses the exact same configuration that we have defined throughout this blog series.

One interesting little add-on though was Intel has a neat little script at the end which allows one to blow away their drive configs and start over.

************USE THIS WITH CAUTION as it will destroy data****************

I found it in the appendix of this document.

#Script Courtesy of Intel from: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/windows-server-2016-implementation-guide.pdf #The drives intented to be used for S2D must be empty and without partitions or data, or they will #not be included in the S2D System. If you are repurposing existing drives, follow this procedure to make sure they are clean and ready for deployment. #Warning: Make sure you have no data on the cluster drives before running these commands icm (Get-Cluster -Name S2DCLU01| Get-ClusterName) { Update-StorageProviderCache Get-StoragePool | ? IsPrimordial -eq $False | Set-StoragePool -IsReadOnly $False -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue Get-StoragePool | ? IsPrimordial -eq $False | Get-VirtualDisk | Remove-VirtualDisk -Confirm:$False -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue Get-StoragePool | ? IsPrimordial -eq $False | Get-VirtualDisk | Remove-StoragePool -Confirm:$False -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue Get-PhysicalDisk | Reset-PhysicalDisk -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue Get-Disk|? Number -ne $null| ? IsBoot -ne $true |? IsSystem -ne $true |? PartitionStyle -ne RAW | % { $_ |Set-Disk -IsOffline $False $_ |Set-Disk -IsReadOnly $False $_ |Clear-Disk -RemoveData -RemoveOEM -Confirm:$false $_ |Set-Disk -IsReadOnly $true $_ |Set-Disk -IsOffline $true } Get=Disk |? Number -ne $null |? IsBoot -ne $true |? IsSystem -ne $true |? PartitionSytle -eq RAW |Group -NoElement -Property FriendlyName } | Sort -Property PSCompute

Additional Reference links from Intel which are a good reads from Intel are:

3 Ready to Go Configurations for Windows Server 2016 with Storage Spaces Direct

These are pretty old but still a good frame of reference.

http://itpeernetwork.intel.com/3-ready-to-go-configurations-for-windows-server-2016-with-storage-spaces-direct/

IOPs performance on NVMe + HDD configuration with Windows Server 2016 and Storage Spaces Direct

I really like the performance profiling in this blog post.

They go into a decent amount of detail on their testing with NVME Cache and their DISKSPD Results.

I recommend this as a good read.

http://itpeernetwork.intel.com/iops-performance-nvme-hdd-configuration-windows-server-2016-storage-spaces-direct/

IOPs performance of all Flash NVMe + SATA configuration – Windows Server 2016 and Storage Spaces Direct

This design from Intel is the one that I am seeing the most interest from in the marketplace. NVME Cache + SSD for Capacity

This write-up was written pre-RTM launch from Microsoft but still contains some interesting data and is also a good read.

http://itpeernetwork.intel.com/iops-performance-flash-nvme-sata-configuration-windows-server-2016-storage-spaces-direct/

Record Performance of All Flash NVMe Configuration – Windows Server 2016 and Storage Spaces Direct

This last blog post from Intel shows what they claim to be a record breaking configuration at the time of over 3 million IOPS generated from Storage Spaces Direct on 40 GB infrastructure.

Once again written pre-RTM Release of Windows Server 2016 yet still another good read.

http://itpeernetwork.intel.com/record-performance-flash-nvme-configuration-windows-server-2016-storage-spaces-direct-2/

In the next part of this series we will look at some configuration guides available from other vendors.

Happy learning….

Thanks,

Cristal

Cristal Kawula



Cristal Kawula is the co-founder of MVPDays Community Roadshow and #MVPHour live Twitter Chat. She was also a member of the Gridstore Technical Advisory board and is the President of TriCon Elite Consulting. Cristal is also only the 2nd woman in the world to receive the prestigious Veeam Vanguard award.

BLOG: http://www.checkyourlogs.net

Twitter: @supercristal1 / @mvpdays / #mvphour

Check out www.mvpdays.com to see where the MVPDays Roadshow will be next. Maybe it will be in a city near you.

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