BRK1039 - Windows Server Software Defined
The fastest route to the benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure
WinSrv 2016, “Most cloud ready OS”, “Security” etc
Talking about how WS2016 makes it possible to define Network, Compute and Storage in software, as virtual machines/Applicances.
WSSD
Microsoft defines reference architecture, Solution vendors make and certify hardware packages, customers use and get rekommendations from Microsoft and vendors.
Benefits
- Pre-validated
- Partner validated against reference architecture
- Time to value
- Up and running quickly
- Optimized OOB
- Less guesswork
- Tuned for the hardware solution
- Hardware Choice
- Select best match from vendors
Converged Storage
VMs on SMB3 on S2D on SOFS Cluster
Hyper-Converged
VM on S2D SOFS Cluster
Simpler management and deployment, all contained in each “box”.
Cloud-Inspored Infrastructure
| Functionality | Hyper-Converged Standard | Hyper-Converged Premium | Converged SDS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Security | Y | Y | Y |
| SDN | N | Y | N |
| Networking | Y | Y | Y |
| Compute | Y | Y | N |
| Storage | Y | Y | Y |
| Server | Y | Y | Y |
Key Use Cases
- Low-cost high-performance storage
- FileServer, Hyper-V, Databases, Media streaming, High-throughput data ingestion
- Infrastructure for VM
- Enterprise Apps, VDI, Hosting, IT Infrastructure aka Fabric
- SQL Server Databases
- Backup/Archive
Some of the examples given in this section looks less like Hyper-Converged and more like a tad smarter file clusters.
WSSD reference architecture
- Design Overview
- Hardware Requirements
- Expansion
- Server Hardware
- Server and Cluster Configuration
- Net Configuration
- Storage Configuration
- Security Configuration
Then, from requested or required workload, decide what offering (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure or Converged) and design to use.
Quality-Assurance - End to End
- Comp and System Certification
- IHV & Server Vendor
- Win2016 Logo + SDDC Qualifiers
- Solution Validation
- Solution Vendor
- reference architecture
- Stress
- Quality-Assurance
- Solution Vendor
PCS - Private Cloud Simulator
Cool, but can I run it myself?
It is a public tool, but it might need a partner login to access, speaker was unsure. Speaker also suggested that, while it is possible for us to use the tool, it is not developed as a load-tester for any other than the WSSD solution developers.
It would probably be better for us to stick to tools like VMFleet .
Automated Deployment
This is offered by WSSD Partner, although Microsoft has a DSC-kit prepared.
Customer “demo”
- Moving from Server Cluster + iSCSI
- Mostly File Servers and SQL
- Maxed out at 15000 IOPS
- Latency spikes of 50-100ms (ouch)
Went to:
- S2D
- Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
- Hyper-V + Storage on the same node
- Simple
- Fault tolerant
- Good performance
- Lower costs
Opted for DataOn S2d-3216
Tested with VMFleet
- 2225479 IOPS
- 6,6MB/s throughput
- 0.99 Microsoft latency
These tested numbers have held true when in production as well.
Personal Reflections
Again, very little real world talk. It’s all happy-sunshine-candyland.
I have customers that are testing HCI, and from them I know that there is some things you really have to think about to succeed. It would be nice to hear what parts of the WSSD-rollout was super easy and a little on what popped up as “gotchas”.
All these IOPS gains; are they from the S2D clusters or mainly from going from SAS/SATA to SSD? Not sure what kind of disks they had before and what performance the could have gotten from simply upgrading their storage.