W hen you think about enterprise storage, you might picture. Ensuring Storage Flexibility And Agility With Storage Spaces Direct

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1 S T O R A G E Ensuring Storage Flexibility And Agility With Storage Spaces Direct A Q&A with Microsoft s Principal Program Manager for the Windows File Server Team, Claus Joergensen W hen you think about enterprise storage, you might picture it on a pedestal notably important, but beyond the reach of those not tall enough to grasp it. Indeed, enterprise storage has traditionally been complex, expensive, and difficult to scale up and down. In today s dynamic digital economy, that model doesn t fly. Organizations need storage technology that will enable them to

2 quickly respond to changing business initiatives and customer demands, as well as align more closely with business needs and customer demands. Enter Storage Spaces Direct, a storage platform from Microsoft that enables enterprises and service providers to use what they have or what they can quickly and inexpensively get to build highly available and scalable servers with local storage (Figure 1). Storage Spaces Direct, which builds on Microsoft s Storage Spaces technology, also enables organizations to leverage devices they couldn t have previously, such as a SATA solid-state drive (SSD) to drive down the cost of flash storage or NVMe flash for even better performance. Figure 1. Storage Spaces Direct enables organization to quickly, easily and relatively inexpensively add storage capacity. Claus Joergensen, principal program manager in the Microsoft Windows File Server Team, puts the new Microsoft storage technology in context, and explains what it will mean for organizations challenged by the explosion in data we are seeing today. How do organizations get a hold of Storage Spaces Direct? Storage Spaces Direct is available for evaluation in Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2, which can be downloaded now ( center/evaluate-windows-server-technical-preview). What can organizations expect from the technology? With Storage Spaces Direct, you can use industry-standard servers with local storage to build highly available and scalable software-defined storage (SDS) for the private cloud. STORAGE 2

3 We built Storage Spaces Direct primarily for serving private cloud storage and Hyper-V storage. In the past, the path was either storage-area networks (SANs), which have been deployed for years and years, or Storage Spaces, which we shipped it in our last generation of Windows Server. Storage Spaces Direct is a SDS solution. This is important because it allows you to use industry-standard server hardware to build storage systems so it becomes less of a proprietary hardware play. It also typically reduces the cost associated with storage, which is the top consideration for most customers. We assume reliability is there; we assume performance is there; so, cost is the major consideration for customers. What is the primary use case for Storage Spaces Direct? The primary use case is private cloud storage on-premises for enterprises or in hosted private clouds for service providers. Storage Spaces Direct has two modes of deployment: private cloud hyperconverged, where Storage Spaces Direct and the hypervisor (Hyper-V) are on the same servers, or as private cloud storage, where Storage Spaces Direct is separate from the hypervisor (Figure 2). A hyper-converged deployment groups compute and storage, which simplifies the deployment model. A private cloud storage deployment separates the compute and storage resources. While the latter is more complex in terms of deployment, it lets companies scale compute and storage independently and helps them to avoid overprovisioning storage. How does Storage Spaces Direct change the way storage is procured and managed in the enterprise and at service providers; or does it? Two things have happened since our previous generation of Storage Spaces. We require less complex hardware, and we unlocked the use of new device types. The ability to use more device types can help bring down costs further or increase performance more, depending on what your goal is. In a classic enterprise, if you have a SAN-type storage system, then you would STORAGE 3

4 Figure 2. Storage Spaces Direct features two modes of deployment. often have a group that manages the SAN and a different group that manages the virtualization Hyper-V, in our case. The typical process would be, Oh, I need to bring some more virtualization online, so I ll write a requisition for more storage from the SAN guys. We ll fill in all of these blanks, and, in a number of days, something shows up that we can connect to and start consuming. With Storage Spaces Direct, we are basically giving storage to the virtualization team the virtualization team now has independence, if it chooses, from the SAN team. This provides organizations with more agility in terms of bringing systems online. So many organizations today are challenged by an explosion in data and the need to quickly access and analyze that data. Does Storage Spaces Direct help organizations to cope? If you have a system up and running and you need more performance or more capacity, it is almost as simple as: Go buy another server with these source devices in it, attach it to the existing system, and then rebalance your data. It is a less complex process than it would be if you had a SAN and a more agile process in that it can happen more quickly. I would expect that a major server hardware provider could deliver a new server with a given hardware configuration more quickly than it could deliver a SAN expansion. STORAGE 4

5 Can this help organizations respond faster to changing business and market needs? With Storage Spaces Direct you can drive your expansion closer to the time when you actually need it you don t have to plan as much ahead as you probably would. This does not mean that you should not plan ahead you absolutely should, because this still takes time. It s just that you compress the time required to add storage. Storage Spaces Direct is available as part of Windows Server Will IT professionals who are accustomed to working with Windows Server notice any differences? Besides fundamentally changing what kind of storage you can use for high availability, the actual user experience in terms of how I get this done will not radically change. The same set of commands will be used for creating a storage pool or virtual disk, or for creating a file share that you will eventually put your virtual machines on; there s very little difference there. We don t necessarily need people to retrain themselves on this. For instructions on deploying and setting up Storage Spaces Direct go here ( go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=524771). Initial evaluation can be done using four or more generation 2 virtual machines on Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2. Claus Joergensen s session at the Microsoft Ignite 2015 conference on Storage Spaces Direct, Enabling Private Cloud Storage Using Servers with Local Disks, can be accessed here ( STORAGE 5