Storage spaces direct using two servers

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Jeff Robertson

Active Member
Oct 18, 2016
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Chico, CA
Hi folks, I am currently running a single server with a bunch of VMs with my end goal being a HA cluster using two machines and storage spaces direct similar to kepler-47. My question is what is the minimum requirement drive wise to achieve that? My thought was to have each server booting off a pair of mirrored SSDs using built in intel fakeraid and a pair of 1tb ssds hanging off the sata ports for storage spaces. Will that work? Do I need a separate drive as a log drive? I only need about 1tb useable though 2 would be better. Will the 1tb drives even be visible to s2d if the motherboard sata controller is set to raid mode?

Thanks!
 

Jeff Robertson

Active Member
Oct 18, 2016
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Chico, CA
S2D only supports 3 bus types
SATA
SAS
NVMe

you cannot have a raid bus type (pass through mode on a IR controller still counts as raid bus type)...

Have the boot disk mirrored. Then you would need other disks on sata (AHCI mode) for S2D to use. that is possible.

Microsoft Discusses Small and Fast Kepler-47 Server Prototype - WinBuzzer

Chris
That's what I thought, I was hoping someone would lie to me :). I may just have to forego the mirrored boot drives, ssds are pretty stable these days and if one goes down the second should pick up. Do you know if I could get away with 2 1tb ssds in each machine using mirroring for 2tb of total available space or will I need a log drive to go along with that?

Thanks for the info!
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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This is the exact setup of my 2 nodes HA cluster.
I added a dual port 10GBe card in each server, with 2 cheap DAC cables, the cluster is using SMB multichannel mode with dual 10GBe network.
It is getting very impressive results. Almost same r/w speed as local raid 0 SSD. Good enough for my homelab.
 

Jeff Robertson

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Oct 18, 2016
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Chico, CA
Good to hear! If things work out I am hoping to build two nodes based on supermicro micro atx 2011-3 boards. I will be using ebay mellanox 2 port 10gbe cards with the two nodes connected directly to each other via a dac and then 10gb to the rest of the network. Any thoughts on using two different CPUs? I was thinking an E5-1650 v4 (6 core, high clock) and an E5-2630 v4 (10 core low clock), both cpus should be supported in the supermicro boards.
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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You'll need to research regarding CPU requirement in a MSFT HA cluster.
I have not use different CPU in a cluster lately. But in Windows 2008 days, it is a no no .
 

Jeff Robertson

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Oct 18, 2016
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Chico, CA
I know you have to use cpus of a similar architecture but I don't think they have to be identical across machines (they have to be identical within a machine of course but I'm dealing with single proc systems). I currently have a cluster using two dl380 g7s and they each have different processors though the core count is the same. I'll make sure I can return one of them just in case.
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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I was referring Microsoft live migration VM between Hyper-v hosts.
What is your plan regarding Quorum for the cluster?
 

Jeff Robertson

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Oct 18, 2016
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Chico, CA
I *think* as long as I keep my VMs to 12 cores or less (the max of the e5-1650 including hyper-threading) I should be able to live migrate them... If not I'll have to just use matching chips. My plan for a quorum is an iscsi share from my qnap. I already have a 10gb share set up for the two g7s so I'll probably just re-use that with the new cluster.
 

cesmith9999

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Mar 26, 2013
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if you have different core types you will need to make sure that the Hyper-V Guest has cpu compatibility turned on. or you may be in for a shock when it will not migrate.

Chris
 

Jeff Robertson

Active Member
Oct 18, 2016
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Chico, CA
That's what I thought as well but I've been reading threads in which live migration works across modestly different CPUs including those with different core counts... Microsoft may not support that config but it seems to be working for some people. I'm not terribly worried, it would be nice to have one with higher clocks and one with more cores but I can live with two of either of those CPUs.