Storage Spaces Direct 2 Node Hyper-V Cluster

[EricNiemiec]

Setting up a 2 node Hyper-V cluster without a SAN and plan to use Storage Spaces Direct for my storage.  I have two identical servers in this Hyper-V cluster with a multi disk SSD Raid 5 data array exposed to the OS. I assume S2D will see the 2 Raid 5 arrays on these servers and I will be able to mirror them as a single CSV which I will then put my clustered VMs on. (these two servers will be connected to each other with a 10gb switch)

My question is; if VM1 is live on Node1 in this simple 2 node S2D mirror example, will S2D attempt to serve the VM files from the same node or with all the CSV traffic go out to the physical switch regardless?  I understand this gets more complicated with multiple drives scattered across many servers, but are there any optimizations in this 2 node example?

Final question - is there a better way that I should be constructing a 2 node Hyper-V cluster with out a SAN?

Thanks in advance!

[#2]

Hey,

S2D doesn't support RAID as an underlying storage. Check the following article about hardware requirements for more information:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-spaces/storage-spaces-direct-hardwar...

You will need to have HBA, because S2D needs direct access to the drives. S2D will handle local redundancy and will mirror data between the nodes.

As an alternative, you can use StarWind VSAN, which can create shared storage on top of RAID array and serve it to Failover Cluster via iSCSI. The following guide should help with the configuration:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resource-library/starwind-virtual-san-for-hyper-v-2-node-hyperconve...

Cheers,

Alex Bykovskyi

StarWind Software

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