Been gone for a bit due to work schedules and personal training schedules. I cannot believe the class I have been waiting on for a year plus finally opened up and I got the opportunity! Whee for me!
Any ways back to looking at this article.
The subtitle: What are the recommended configuration limits?
There is really nothing that I can add or take away from this side of the article. These here are incredibly vague and gives us the sense that we can use, well almost, ANYTHING with a SAS card, JBOD and some drives. This sadly is not the case as experience is teaching me. Please ensure you do your research on your hardware!
I am most familiar with Dell hardware (well that is just how it seems to be for me at this time), not that other vendor equipment is out of spec or out of line for me to work on. It just seems for me that is what I get to work with most often.
So which card to use? Right now there is the SAS6E and LSI's 9207-8e available from Dell. Either really allows us to work with Storage Spaces nicely. Before making the decision here, look at the JBODs first! I will advise you in just a bit why!
What is available? Once again I can only speak to what I know - the MD1220, MD1200 and MD3060e. All of which work wonderfully?!? Yes and no!
This is where i have to say look before purchase. The MD12xx is awesome for that simple single server running role X. It will work with a cluster even. There is even a white paper on how to deploy multiple JBODs into a HA configuration. However let's look at the day to day management side.
The Enclosure Management Modules (EMMs) on the MD12xx are simple and do not have any real intelligence to them. Why is this important? Well one of the quarterly operations you will perform will be drive firmware updates. In the MD12xx series you will HAVE to down the cluster nodes or single server and boot into the Life Cycle Controller to update drive firmware. There is not an in OS option to perform this.
The MD3060e however has a CLI software package that can inside the OS update drive firmware. You will still need to down the storage pool, but if you properly design this into multiple smaller pools this should work fine. You then update the drives one at a time, then online the pool again and done. This is only possible due to the EMM firmware on these JBODs.
Besides the 2nd benefit is you get 60 drives in a single enclosure of 4U size (the same as 2 MD12xx JBODs). Another benefit is these EMMs are a bit more intelligent and you can setup a telnet session to these modules. This will allow you to monitor the backend storage which Storage Spaces at this time seems to lack.
The only catch to the MD3060e is you CANNOT use the SAS6e card - you must use the LSI 9207-8e for it. Yes it is a big more expensive, but save the headache.
Drives are one of the areas that we cannot skimp on. Do the research here and find drives that are compatible with your JBOD's vendor. The management modules need to have no latency in communicating to the drives. Another point is drive firmware changes often - if you do not get "supported" drives by your hardware vendor then you will never get that update.
Lastly and most importantly if your drive has a recall or some quality issue and you need a RMA - your hardware vendor on supported drives often will contact you and "swap" it out immediately for a different drive. This is much better than going directly to the drive manufacture and waiting 6-9 weeks for this same swap.
Sit down and design into multiple pools. JRR Tolkien was right - one pool to rule them all is not always best =P
Any ways back to looking at this article.
The subtitle: What are the recommended configuration limits?
There is really nothing that I can add or take away from this side of the article. These here are incredibly vague and gives us the sense that we can use, well almost, ANYTHING with a SAS card, JBOD and some drives. This sadly is not the case as experience is teaching me. Please ensure you do your research on your hardware!
SAS HBAs
Unfortunately not all are created equal. Even though MS will say it can support it the hardware vendor might not. The chipset used in the HBA might not as well. So which to use and why?I am most familiar with Dell hardware (well that is just how it seems to be for me at this time), not that other vendor equipment is out of spec or out of line for me to work on. It just seems for me that is what I get to work with most often.
So which card to use? Right now there is the SAS6E and LSI's 9207-8e available from Dell. Either really allows us to work with Storage Spaces nicely. Before making the decision here, look at the JBODs first! I will advise you in just a bit why!
JBODs
This is where it gets exciting and where we have to use some insight as to how many pools and how large we want to grow to. As always make sure you have expansion room and growth. The most complex design is not always the best, so when possible keep it simple.What is available? Once again I can only speak to what I know - the MD1220, MD1200 and MD3060e. All of which work wonderfully?!? Yes and no!
This is where i have to say look before purchase. The MD12xx is awesome for that simple single server running role X. It will work with a cluster even. There is even a white paper on how to deploy multiple JBODs into a HA configuration. However let's look at the day to day management side.
The Enclosure Management Modules (EMMs) on the MD12xx are simple and do not have any real intelligence to them. Why is this important? Well one of the quarterly operations you will perform will be drive firmware updates. In the MD12xx series you will HAVE to down the cluster nodes or single server and boot into the Life Cycle Controller to update drive firmware. There is not an in OS option to perform this.
The MD3060e however has a CLI software package that can inside the OS update drive firmware. You will still need to down the storage pool, but if you properly design this into multiple smaller pools this should work fine. You then update the drives one at a time, then online the pool again and done. This is only possible due to the EMM firmware on these JBODs.
Besides the 2nd benefit is you get 60 drives in a single enclosure of 4U size (the same as 2 MD12xx JBODs). Another benefit is these EMMs are a bit more intelligent and you can setup a telnet session to these modules. This will allow you to monitor the backend storage which Storage Spaces at this time seems to lack.
The only catch to the MD3060e is you CANNOT use the SAS6e card - you must use the LSI 9207-8e for it. Yes it is a big more expensive, but save the headache.
Drives
Last but honestly one of the most important pieces. Select the correct drives. Since we are using SAS technology for Storage Spaces we are really able to use ANY drive. The cards will not alert and bug us that drive X is not supported. So nice to have some freedom right? Well not really.Drives are one of the areas that we cannot skimp on. Do the research here and find drives that are compatible with your JBOD's vendor. The management modules need to have no latency in communicating to the drives. Another point is drive firmware changes often - if you do not get "supported" drives by your hardware vendor then you will never get that update.
Lastly and most importantly if your drive has a recall or some quality issue and you need a RMA - your hardware vendor on supported drives often will contact you and "swap" it out immediately for a different drive. This is much better than going directly to the drive manufacture and waiting 6-9 weeks for this same swap.
Summary
Do the research on your hardwareSit down and design into multiple pools. JRR Tolkien was right - one pool to rule them all is not always best =P
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