Tag Archives: Windows Server 2016

Configure Dell S4048 switches for Storage Spaces Direct

When we deploy Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), either hyperconverged or disaggregated, we have to configure the networking part. Usually we work with Dell hardware to deploy Storage Spaces Direct and the one of the switches supported by the Dell reference architectures is the Dell S4048 (Force 10). In this topic, we will see how to configure this switch from scratch. ...

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Connect StarWind Virtual Tape Library to a Windows Server 2016

StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL) is a feature included in StarWind Virtual SAN. StarWind VTL provides a virtual LTO library to store your backup archival. StarWind VTL eliminates the heavy process of tape management and also a costly LTO library. StarWind VTL provides virtual tape to store your backup archival. The connection between StarWind Virtual Tape Library and a server ...

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Storage Spaces Direct dashboard

Today I release a special Christmas gift for you. For some time, I’m writing a PowerShell script to generate a Storage Spaces Direct dashboard. This dashboard enables you to validate each important setting for a S2D cluster. I decided to write this PowerShell script to avoid to run hundred of PowerShell cmdlet and check manually returned value. With this dashboard, ...

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Monitor S2D with Operations Manager 2016

Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) is the Microsoft Software-Defined Storage solution. Thanks to S2D, we can deploy hyperconverged infrastructure based on Microsoft technologies such as Hyper-V. This feature is included in Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition. You can find a lot of blog posts about S2D on this website. In this topic, I’ll talk about how to monitor S2D. S2D is ...

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Don’t worry, Storage Spaces Direct is not dead !

Usually, I’m not speaking about news but only about technical details. But with the release of Windows Server 2016 1709, lot of misinformation have been written and I’d like to show another way to look at this. First of all, it is important to understand what happened to Windows Server 2016. Microsoft has modified how Windows Server is distributed to ...

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Storage Spaces Direct: plan the storage for hyperconverged

When a customer calls me to design or validate the hardware configuration for hyperconverged infrastructure with Storage Spaces Direct, there is often a misunderstanding about the remaining useable capacity, the required cache capacity and ratio, and the different mode of resilience. With this topic, I’ll try to help you to plan the storage for hyperconverged and to clarify some points. ...

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Deploy Veeam Cloud Connect for large environments in Microsoft Azure

Veeam Cloud Connect is a solution to store backups and archives in a second datacenter such as Microsoft Azure. Thanks to this technology, we can easily follow the 3-2-1 backup rule (3 backups; 2 different medias; 1 offsite). Last time I talked about Veeam Cloud Connect, I deployed all Veeam roles within a single VM. This time I’m going to ...

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Deploy a SMB storage solution for Hyper-V with StarWind VSAN free

StarWind VSAN free provides a free Software-Defined Storage (SDS) solution for two nodes. With this solution, you are able to deliver a highly available storage based on Direct-Attached Storage devices. On top of StarWind VSAN free, you can deploy a Microsoft Failover Clustering with Scale-Out File Server (SOFS). So you can deploy a converged SDS solution with Windows Server 2016 ...

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RDS 2016 farm: RDS Final configuration

This article is the final topic about how to deploy a Remote Desktop Service in Microsoft Azure with Windows Server 2016. In this topic, we will apply the RDS Final configuration, such as the certificates, the collection and some custom settings. Then we will try to open a remote application from the portal. Deploy a Windows Server 2016 RDS Farm ...

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