Ultimate high availability cluster build

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Jeff Robertson

Active Member
Oct 18, 2016
429
115
43
Chico, CA
Hi folks, I've been spending the last few weeks researching and building the ultimate cluster setup! I plan on using this as a basis for some commercial work loads that absolutely, positively cannot go down. The amount of $ on the line is staggering so I hope I've done my homework properly! Some of the equipment is pretty high end so don't feel bad if you don't recognize it. I know it took me weeks to figure out what half of it does, some of it is still a mystery...

Here are images of the final product:
20161213_101109-min.jpg
20161213_101101-min.jpg
20161213_101107-min.jpg

There you have it, notice the clever use of gravity to hold the high end storage devices in place! I thought about adding more nodes but just the two are so powerful I left it at that. I had to do some seriously heavy duty engineering to get rid of the vibrations from the storage system, in the end I purchased a very expensive ream of paper, it does the job perfectly.
 
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Jeff Robertson

Active Member
Oct 18, 2016
429
115
43
Chico, CA
In all seriousness I threw a couple of spare precision workstation on a bench with some old hard drives and managed to create a storage spaces direct 2 node cluster in less than two hours. It works but it is S L O W given the 320GB ancient hard drives I found in a drawer. Microsoft hit a home run with 2016 and s2d, I will be creating a similar cluster (with new, server grade equipment of course) for myself once altaro starts supporting 2016 with their backup software.