Advice: Storage Servers and Windows Storage Spaces

[t481]

Hi all,
I'm looking for some advice on how to get the best from our newly procured storage servers.

I have the following:
2 x Lenovo SR630 1U servers each with 2 x CPU sockets (44 cores in total) and 512GB RAM
2 x Lenovo D3284 JBOD with 84 8TB drives and SSDs - 1PB RAID 5 + 6TB SSD (if configured with RAID 5)
Both installed in server rooms 450m apart.
Each is connected to the network via 4 x 10GbE uplinks
Each has 4 x 16GB FC SAN connectivity (for SAN-based backups and restores)


I'm looking to use these as Veeam Proxy as well as storage repository

I was thinking of using Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct to create a cluster and use that to create a very large ReFS volume for Veeam to use as a repository or whether to keep each server separate and present storage from each individually and then use Veeam Scale-out Repositories?

I want to achieve the maximum throughput on those 2 x 4 10GbE ports for backups and restores etc while maintaining resiliency should we lose one of the computer rooms

Any advice is welcome

[PTide]

Hi,

Regarding StorageSpaces Direct - I'm not really sure about RAID, because MS explicitly mentions in bold here:

Here's how drives can be connected for Storage Spaces Direct:

Direct-attached SATA drives
<...>
NOT SUPPORTED: RAID controller cards or SAN (Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCoE) storage. Host-bus adapter (HBA) cards must implement simple pass-through mode.

On the other hand, there have been a lot of confusion around ReFS+RAID support status recently, so I would double-check about SSD+RAID with MS directly.

Thanks

[t481]

Thanks @PTide
I have the option of presenting the drives directly so there would be no need for RAID groups.

[nmdange]

Storage Spaces performance with parity is pretty bad. With Storage Spaces Direct, Microsoft introduced the concept of mirror-accelerated parity, which helps somewhat. However, with storage spaces direct you need a minimum of 4 nodes in the cluster to do dual-parity (I don't think you can even do single parity with S2D). With only 2 servers, you can only do 2-way mirroring.