Dell Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces Best Practices Guide

This document describes the best practices for the Dell Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces (DSMS) solution. The DSMS is a software-defined storage (SDS) platform that uses Microsoft Storage Spaces and Dell servers, storage, and networking. You can deploy and configure the DSMS solution as a Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) or as a Converged solution.

When you configure the DSMS solution as a SOFS, the compute workloads are disaggregated from the storage. The compute workloads use Server Message Block (SMB) to access SOFS file shares on the storage nodes, which are direct SAS attached to the storage enclosures and provisioned and protected by clustered Storage Spaces.

Alternatively, you can configure the DSMS solution as a Converged solution. In this implementation, SOFS is not used and the compute workloads now run directly on the servers, which are direct SAS-attached to the storage enclosures. Clustered Storage Spaces are used to provision and protect the shared storage, which is used to store all the compute workload data.

This document is intended to support DSMS configurations, which have unique solution SKUs called Solution IDs. These DSMS solution IDs are required when ordering a DSMS configuration, and to access the benefits such as performance and sizing, optimized server and storage components, single-payload updates, and solution-level technical support. If you are in a geographical area outside of the US, the solution IDs are not available at this time. However, you may reference the configuration name instead. For the complete list of configuration solution IDs, see Dell Storage with Microsoft Storage Spaces Configurations and Solution IDs available at Dell Tech Center.

Figure 1. The correct solution ID connects you to all the solution has to offer, including Dell Services and Support.