CDP-B361

Background Solution introduced in Windows Server 2012; refined and enhanced in Windows Server 2012 R2 Developed based on customer feedback (“Please lower the cost of storage!”) Layers multiple Microsoft technologies into a resilient and highly scalable storage stack Allows for a disaggregated architecture with a true separation between compute and storage services Key Technologies Storage Spaces: Virtualized storage technology pairing resiliency with performance Failover Clustering: Highly available storage access Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV): Scalable and unified storage access SMB3: Resilient and performant leveraging SMB Multichannel, SMB Direct, and SMB Client Redirection System Center, PowerShell and In-box Windows Tooling: Management/configuration/troubleshooting Value Proposition Flexible, low-cost storage solutions based entirely on commodity hardware and Microsoft software

Scale-Out File Server Clusters Storage Spaces Hyper-V Clusters SMB3 Storage Network Fabric Shared JBOD Storage PowerShell & SCVMM 2012 R2 Management 1.Performance, Scale: SMB3 File Storage Network 2.Continuous Availability and Seamless Scale Out with File Server Nodes 3.Elastic, Reliable, Optimized Tiered Storage Spaces 4.Standard volume hardware for low cost Session Focus

Typical Customer Starting Point Suggested Architectural Response “I need a storage subsystem that can support 500,000 IOPS.” “That’s a great data point. Let’s talk through a few others.”

StepTitleDescription 1Solution Requirement Assessment Identification and qualification/quantification of the key solution requirements, variables, pivots and endpoints, including details around the definition of a successful solution. 2SDS Design (Initial) Process of matching the solution requirements with the available solution building blocks (e.g. hardware and software) and best-practice design patterns (e.g. topologies and configurations). 3Deployment (Test) Actual hardware and software deployment of the initial SDS design, potentially in a more limited scale and/or Proof-of-Concept (PoC) environment. 4ValidationEnsure that all requirements outlined in Step 1 are acceptably satisfied or mitigated by the deployment. Initial validation iterations typically involve leveraging synthetic workloads (e.g. SQLIO, Iometer, etc.); however, later validation runs must include actual production workload patterns and scale.

StepTitleDescription 5OptimizationBased on the results of the previous steps and any surfaced shortcomings, tune and optimize the solution (e.g. add/remove/replace hardware, modify topology, reconfigure software, etc.) and then revalidate (i.e. repeat Step 4). 6Deployment (Production) After the solution design converges (i.e. validation outcomes fully satisfy the solution requirements) production deployment can proceed, scaling up and out to required levels in a controlled and methodical fashion. 7Maintenance Workflow Operational phase consisting of solution monitoring/troubleshooting/repairing, upgrading/patching and scaling.

Leveraging Storage Tiering

Increasing the SSD:HDD Ratio

Increasing Enclosure Count

Increasing SAS Connections

Increasing the Pool Count

Pool OptionDetails RepairPolicySequential vs Parallel (lower IO hit but slower vs higher IO hit and faster) RetireMissingPhysicalDisksWith Fast Rebuild, missing disks don’t cause a repair operation when set to Auto (requires Always) IsPowerProtectedTrue causes write-through operations to return before committed to disk. Power loss can lead to data corruption.

Increasing the Virtual Disk Count

3-Way over 2-Way Mirroring Pool Count Mirror TypeOverhead 1 Pool Fault Tolerance 2 System Fault Tolerance 3 12-way50%1 Disk 3-way67%2 Disks 22-way50%1 Disk2 Disks 3-way67%2 Disks4 Disks 32-way50%1 Disk3 Disks 3-way67%2 Disks6 Disks 42-way50%1 Disk4 Disks 3-way67%2 Disks8 Disks

Virtual Disk OptionConsiderations InterleaveFor random IO (e.g. virtualized workloads), the interleave should be greater than or equal to the largest dominant IO in the workload, as any IO larger is split into multiple stripes, reducing performance.interleave WBC SizeThe default 1GB allocation strikes a reasonable balance between performance and resiliency for most workloads (e.g. increasing the WBC size increases the destagging time required in failover cases). IsEnclosureAwareOffering a higher-level of fault-protection, whenever possible, leverage enclosure awareness. To enable, deploy at the least the minimum number of JBODs required for feature support and set the flag to True when provisioning a Virtual Disk.required

Considerations After completion of the initial SDS design, the paper exercise of designing the storage solution, continue following the steps in the SDS Design Workflow (above), understanding that changes will inevitably be made to the initial design based on iterative testing and resulting refinements.

Putting It All Together

On-premises innovation with Azure Consistent public, private, and hybrid cloud experiences Multitenant, self-service consumption on shared infrastructure Resilient fabric for greater availability and system agility Software-defined datacenter Efficient use of hardware through an innovative software layer Rich catalog of tenant services Optimal platform for Microsoft apps Validated from the ground up End-to-end testing and validation of devices, firmware, and software Management of factory integration and onsite deployment by Microsoft Predictable order to live timelines Single-vendor support Centralized incident management provided by Microsoft Onboard monitoring of hardware, resources, and services Validation of performance and scale benchmarks by Microsoft Microsoft led support and extreme automation for operations and upgrading Complete validation of all components and integration for higher resiliency and agility Software-defined technologies for better economics and agility Factory integrated converged system accelerates time to value A multi-tenant, self-service cloud environment for PaaS, DBaaS (SQL Server & MySQL), IaaS (Windows & Linux) Windows Server 2012 R2 System Center 2012 R2 Windows Azure Pack Dell server, storage and networking hardware Microsoft Cloud Platform System: an Azure-consistent cloud in a box