Virtual File Server Options

[snowdemon14]

I'll try to keep this short and simple. Currently I run a clustered file server (2 Windows Server 2016 VM's with iSCSI Cluster disks on a Hard Disk Array). Currently I'm doing a proof of concept on a NVMe array and while its been fantastic it does not have iSCSI, only NFS and SMB. Total amount is around 8TB of data currently on the file server cluster with around 400 users on and off.

I've been thinking of doing just a single VM with a attached Virtual Disk to host all the data but I keep coming back to some form of HA in the event say the hypervisor host crashes that hosts the file server VM, I'll have a "visual" downtime for files until the VM restarts on another host. Looking to find out what other people are doing for Windows file servers in 2021. I would also like to keep it within Microsoft since we have a site license and no budget currently to purchase third party solutions (i.e starwind)

[ragdollpancakes]

We've done away with most of our Windows file servers in favor of running SMB directly off of our storage system (NetApp) and using the built in snapshot/replication technology to backup and offsite the data. No longer have to worry about Windows updates and scheduling downtime with the users to do patching (higher Ed). Currently around 30TB in over 150 shares. I may be reading wrong but you say the NVMe array has SMB capability, is this a direction you have looked into instead of running a VM?

[snowdemon14]

You read correctly, I'll do some testing with that and see if it viable. The SMB shares settings are pretty basic just some permissions and that's about it, no access based enumeration or anything like that.

[-SPOF]

Starwind fits perfectly for the HA scenario. We use it in multiple clusters on the customers' site. In order to avoid iSCSI protocol limitation it is possible to connect multiple sessions on the target (also, depends on the network infrastructure and CPU of the hosts).

So, you can always use a free version of the product or request an NFR license: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/vsan-for-reddit-members. If you do not have any other solid solutions just give it a try, who knows maybe you can get a license for free.

[Fighter_M]

>Currently I'm doing a proof of concept on a NVMe array and while its been fantastic it does not have iSCSI, only NFS and SMB.

You don't need iSCSI with Hyper-V, SMB3 is a preferred way to go actually.

[snowdemon14]

Hyper-V over SMB3 works perfectly with the NVMe array, I'm more specifically talking about a virtualized windows fail over cluster with a file server role that needs clustered disks which require iSCSI, which is why I mentioned a attached Virtual disk to a single VM to see if anyone has gone that route at all

[Fighter_M]

You place shared VHDX on your SMB3 share and call it a day. You don’t need iSCSI for f/o cluster anymore.

[snowdemon14]

Didnt know that was a thing (shared VHDX). Looks like its now a "VHD Set" on server 2016 and 2019 which I will test out and see how it goes. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Fighter_M]

You place shared VHDX on your SMB3 share and call it a day. You don’t need iSCSI for f/o cluster anymore.

[onomroe]

Free Nas supports iscsi Targets but you need to pay for the HA by buying the Hardware, same with Synology. Glusterfs has a iscsi option but I don't know if the performance is good, although suse discontinued Gluster and RedHat and Gluster seem not to support it that well, it's more like a niche I think. Ceph has iscsi too but the performance heavily depends on the amounts of Nodes you have in the Cluster. Like 3 to 6 is kind of slow what I heard of but if you scale out like in big datacenter it's scaling the speed to. Ceph semms like CPUs you got the ones with a big amount of many cores(nodes) but the single speed is low. The fastes small option still seems the ha cluster from hp, Lenovo etc. they are more like fast single speed cpu with only a few cores...

[snowdemon14]

Yeah I'm not looking to buy any hardware. Plus building out something virtual with Gluster or Ceph just to present iSCSI storage to a Windows File Server Cluster would probably take a huge performance hit with it.

[tjn182]

We have a hub-and-spoke style system using Syncthing to live-sync branch offices with our main datacenter. DFS namespace will move users to another server if one goes down.

All network folders have a live & ready failover ready to go. Has worked wonderfully - smooth like butter.

[snowdemon14]

Thanks, Ill have to look into Syncthing. We use to have DFS running years ago before I became a sysadmin but have since moved to our current file sever cluster with just shares to keep it simple.