Windows Storage Spaces Direct Storage Servers

Windows Storage Spaces Direct

Windows Storage Spaces Direct is known for continuous availability and high scalability for a much lower cost than many of the other options on the market. It creates software defined storage by using servers with locally attached drives. The architecture can be designed to be either converged or hyper-converged, making procurement and deployment a lot easier. Its amazing levels of efficiency and performance are boosted by its main features like storage tiers and caching, in addition to its use of the latest hardware like NVMe drives.

Deployment

As mentioned, Storage Spaces Direct can be designed for two deployment options, converged and hyper-converged. With the converged option, compute and storage are in different clusters. Whereas with the hyper-converged option, the storage and compute are together in one cluster. Both have their advantages, but converged infrastructure is generally more flexible than hyper-converged infrastructure as it allows for easier scalability and more efficiency.

Hardware

There are certain hardware requirements that arise when you choose to use Storage Space Direct. For networking hardware, the software is designed to use SMB3 instead of ethernet. For storage hardware it supports anywhere between 2 and 16 servers with locally attached NVMe, SAS or SATA drives. For each individual server, there needs to be 2 SSDs and 4 extra drives as a minimum requirement. If you use SAS or SATA, then the devices need to be behind an HBA (host-bus adapter) and SAS expander.

Features

Since 2012 there are have been a large number of improvements, innovations and newly added features that have made Storage Space Direct extremely effective.

Storage Replica is a feature that allow for volume replication between servers. It is very effective for disaster recovery and gives you the relief of knowing that you have an extra layer of protection between your data and a catastrophe. Using the reliable and proven technology of SMB3, this feature is extremely effective. Storage Replica also has all of the advanced characteristics of SMB3 available to it.

The Software Storage Bus is a new feature that has essentially replaced Shared SAS cabling. It creates a software-defined storage fabric through which every server can see the local drives of the other servers. The Software Storage Bus is a feature that will dynamically join the fastest possible present drives to the drives that are lagging behind. By doing this it provides caching that speeds up IO and increases throughput. The Storage Pool feature creates a storage pool that is made up of a collection of drives. Any drive that is eligible is added to the pool automatically.

There is also a feature that provides a good amount of fault tolerance to the virtual "disks". It's done by either mirroring, erasure coding, or a combination of the two. The Resilient file system is a system built from scratch for virtualisation, increasing both the acceleration of key file operations and built-in error detection/correction system.

Volume sizes up to 64TB and single file sizes up to 1TB are now supported by Data Deduplication, which wasn't the case prior to 2016. You are also now able to easily back up data to the cloud using a Microsoft Azure-based cloud service. The VHDX files that are hosted on ReFS volumes get significant performance boosts due to the Resilient File System. The work folders feature means any changes in files are automatically synced directly to the work folders server. Storage quality of service feature (QoS) can be used centrally observe and monitor the end to end performance of your storage. Powershell comes with a huge advancement in new features, including class development support, more security capabilities, an improved usability, and more. Both virtual and physical machines will gain from the latest time synchronisation feature. They will have a much higher time accuracy due to the effects of the improvements in both Win32 Time and Hyper-V Time Synchronisation Services. Services will be compliant with the potential regulations that will require a minimum of a 1ms accuracy in relation to UTC. Finally, the JEA feature (Just Enough Administration) is a security technology that allows delegated administration for essentially anything that you can choose to manage through Windows PowerShell.

Performance

The powerful performance provided by this software is difficult to find replicated anywhere else on the market. Storage Spaces Direct reaches way over 150,000 mixed 4k random IOPS per server. That goes for both all-flash and hybrid. Due to the architecture which is hypervisor-embedded it also features low latency and reliability. Its support for the latest NVMe drives also helps keep latency very low.

Constant Availability

Boasting constant availability, Storage Spaces Direct has built-in resiliency features to deal with failures. Its high level of fault tolerance is due to its resiliency in handling component failures and maintaining its availability. Should any hardware fail, you just remove it and put in a replacement. There is no complex management process needed, the software makes the necessary adjustments itself.

Scalable

Storage Spaces Direct is incredibly scalable. You can scale down to 2 servers, and scale as high as 16 servers and more than 400 drives. That makes up to 1 petabyte per cluster. Scaling is simple, all you do is add more drives or more servers. The software automatically onboards the latest drives and they will immediately become in use. The level of performance will always scale in a reliable and consistent manner.

Management Tools

Once deployed, there are a number of different maintenance tasks you will likely perform over the long term. These generally include such tasks monitoring for and fixing issues, replacing any parts that do fail, and updating your drivers.

There are four common tools that you can use to manage Storage Spaces Direct. Windows Admin Centre and Windows PowerShell are two of the most common. System Centre Virtual Machine Manager & Operations Manager is another, while the final common management option is Failover Cluster Manager & Server Manager.

Windows Admin Centre is a powerful tool, with a decent level of ease of use. It needs to be installed, and once done so it has helpful displays that allow you to monitor the status of individual servers and clusters.

Windows PowerShell is a great option if you are looking to automate and want full control over every single aspect of storage. The only real negative is that its better for management, rather than visual monitoring of system health. In that aspect, Windows Admin Centre is a more effective option for management.

System Centre VMM & Operations Manager is one of the easiest management tools to use and also provides a nice graphical view of the status of multiple systems. It's a common tool and widely used for management of Storage Space Direct. The only down side could be occasions where tasks that require PowerShell pop up, meaning this tool won't be enough to cover all situations. There are also times where extra infrastructure may become needed.

Failover Cluster Manager & Server Manager is similar in a way. It is also easy to use and has good graphical displays. However, like the previous option it also may require additional tools like PowerShell for certain tasks.

Why Broadberry

Broadberry is the premier provider of Storage Spaces Direct storage servers. With decades of experience in this field, we have built an impressive track record of reliability, consistency and high standards of excellence. Over the years we have supplied servers to many of the very biggest organisations on the planet including the BBC, SKY, NASA, TOYOTA. TESCO, SONY and many more. Having won awards for our service, we pride ourselves on delivering the very best customer experience possible.

Our storage servers are not only fully compatible with Storage Spaces Direct, but they are compatible with any storage server software. We are the only company that provide this level of compatibility across the board. Ordering a storage server from us will save you big money in the long term as if you ever want to change software or upgrade to something new, you won't be forced to purchase a whole new server. With us one box is all you need to run any software you could ever want to run. We are proud to be the sole providers of storage servers with such widescale compatibility.

In addition to this, our storage servers are also configurable with third party hardware. Unlike the majority of other storage server suppliers in this market, we do not believe in vendor locking. You will have complete freedom to use whatever hardware you wish to use. Many companies trap you into only buying hardware from them and their partners. We will never do this.

Our prices are as fair as they can be. We provide servers with reliability, performance and quality on par with very best in this industry. However, unlike many of the big-name brands we do not mark-up our products to exorbitant prices. We aim to provide the highest quality servers for the most affordable price, and even at lower prices our systems regularly outperform more expensive options.

With us, there is one price. The price we agree on for the initial purchase and any long-term maintenance required. Unlike other companies in this field we will never hit you with hidden charges, meaning your TCO (total cost of ownership) will be much lower than you would get with the alternative brands on the market.

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