Forum Discussion
Cache drive reconfiguration in Server 2025 Storage Spaces Direct cluster
We have a three node S2D cluster running Server 2025, with the storage in a 3 way mirror, running Hyper-V VMs.
Each node has 4 x NVMe drives that are currently being used as cache drives, but which are connected to a RAID controller (in HBA mode), so in the S2D configuration they appear as SSD drives rather than NVMe drives.
We've purchased the required cables and drive bays to be able to reconfigure the NVMe drives so that they're attached directly to the PCIe bus, so they'll show up as NVMe drives and hopefully give us a performance boost, so I'm just trying to plan the reconfiguration.
I was hoping it would be a relatively simple process of shutting everything down, reconfiguring the storage and bringing everything back online, but ChatGPT suggests things won't be that easy and that a complete reconfiguration of the storage would be required.
So in a nutshell, can the cache drives be reconfigured without a complete rebuild of the S2D storage ?
Cheers,
Rob
2 Replies
Hello Rob,
Yes, you can replace the cache drives but it does require some shuffling.
When your node boots, it binds the capacity drives to (new) cache drives automatically. See a guide here:
How To replace S2D Cache device from SSD to NVME - jtpedersen.com IT made simple
and S2D Manual Cache Rebind--
Darryl van der Peijl
SplitbrainThanks Darryl.
I had read both of those articles already and it wasn't overly clear whether they'd apply to my scenario.
I'm hoping that as the signatures and metadata on the disks should remain the same when moving them from a SAS to NVMe connection, everything will just carry on working, but I'm struggling to find any definitive documentation that will back that up.
Cheers,
Rob
