Recently at the MVPDays Roadshow in Western Canada I had a chance to deliver a session with a few good friends on Storage Spaces Direct.

It was called an Absolute Beginners Guide to Storage Spaces Direct. We recorded this session in Edmonton, AB where Clint Wyckoff @clintwyckoff and Dave Kawula @davekawula delivered it.

If you missed the show you can check out the recording here:

 

During this session, we showcased a cool script that Dave had built that essentially builds a Nested Hyper-V Storage Spaces Direct Farm in a few easy steps.

 

We were really crunched for time so here is a bit more detail on exactly what the Script does for you.

This Part # 13 of this blog series assumes that you have already deployed Storage Spaces Direct in your Lab using a 2-node configuration.

 

Deploying an 8 Node S2D Lab Using Hyper-V

We have authored a script that will build you a nice Hyper-V lab environment including the following servers:

 

  • Domain Controller 1
  • Domain Controller 2
  • DHCP Server
  • Management Server
  • 8 S2D Nodes

 

All of the code has been constructed from a demo script that we first saw Ben Armstrong @VirtualPCGuy showcase for one of his demos. It is very easy to customize to build your own lab environment especially if you want to build a smaller farm.

 

Basically, all you need to do to run this is download an RTM copy of the Windows 2016 ISO and place it in the working directory.

 

For my example, we have used the following parameters for the script execution: 

$WorkingDir = C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\DCBuild
$Organization = MVPDays
$Owner = Dave Kawula
$TimeZone = Pacific Standard Time
$AdminPassword = P@ssw0rd
$DomainName = MVPDays.com
$domainAdminPassword = P@ssw0rd
$VirtualSwitchName = MVPDays_Vswitch
$Subnet = 172.16.200.
$ExtraLabFiles = C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\DCBuild\Extralabfiles

 

BigDemo_S2D.PS1 in action

 

 

Once the Domain Controllers, DHCP, and Management Servers complete their build then the S2D Nodes will commence their build.

 

As mentioned, the process is completely automated with this script from the Creation of Active Director, DHCP Server, Management, and the full build of the S2D Cluster.

 

BigDemo_S2D.PS1 building an 8 node S2D Lab

 

This script can be easily customized to add whatever number of S2D nodes you would like. It is hard coded right now for 8 S2D nodes in order to fit on most testing laptops.

 

BigDemo_S2D.PS1 building a 16 node S2D Lab

 

In the script, we also attempt to emulate a production like environment so we have configured some teams.

 

BigDemo_S2D.PS1 in action showing Configuring the Network Stack of the S2D Nodes

 

 

BigDemo_S2D.PS1 in action showing Failover Cluster Manager with 8 of the S2D Nodes

 

To download the script, go to http://www.github.com/dkawula

 

The name of the script is called BigDemo_S2D.PS1

 

 

Well there you have it you should be able to build your very own Storage Spaces Direct Nested Hyper-V Farm now.

Happy learning….

 

Thanks,

 

Cristal

 

Cristal Kawula

Cristal Kawula is the co-founder of MVPDays Community Roadshow and #MVPHour live Twitter Chat. She was also a member of the Gridstore Technical Advisory board and is the President of TriCon Elite Consulting. Cristal is also only the 2nd woman in the world to receive the prestigious Veeam Vanguard award.

 

BLOG: http://www.checkyourlogs.net

Twitter: @supercristal1 / @mvpdays / #mvphour

Check out www.mvpdays.com to see where the MVPDays Roadshow will be next. Maybe it will be in a city near you.