Dell Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces Best Practices Guide

Scale-Out File Server shares are intended for storage of Hyper-V virtual hard disks and SQL databases. Using Scale-Out File Server shares for end user file shares, containing unstructured data such as home folders, spreadsheets, or PDFs (defined by Microsoft as information worker workloads) is not recommended. Information worker workloads require substantial metadata changes (file open, close, rename, delete) typically from hundreds of users at once. Scale-Out File Server shares are continuously available which requires all nodes to synchronize metadata changes, which in the case of information worker workloads will result in a large performance overhead for these shares due to the large number of metadata changes.

If you require higher performance over high availability on file shares hosting information workloads there are two options:

Option 1: Create a new VM with Windows Server 2012 R2 and store it on a SOFS file share. Install the File Server role and configure it as a File Server for general use. Size the VHDX file appropriately for the amount of information worker data to be stored there. Create all file shares inside the VM.

Option 2: Create a new SMB file share on the SOFS, but uncheck Enable continuous availability.