Deploying Storage Spaces Direct (S2D)

The day has arrived for your company to start deploying its newly acquired HyperConveged Infrastructure from SuperMicro. Fortunately, the Out of Box experience process has been greatly simplified and a near instant-on infrastructure can be achieved. Your Vendor has pre-imaged all of the nodes with a copy of Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition. As you follow this blog series we will walk you through the post-configuration steps necessary to deploy a hyper-converged Storage Spaces Direct configuration.

 

One box arrived today at your company’s headquarters in Calgary, AB, Canada. Currently all that is configured in the rack at the datacenter is the following:

  • 2 x 15 Amp APC PDU (Power Distribution Units)
  • 2 x Top of Rack Cisco Nexus 9372x Switches
  • 2 x APC Rack Mount UPS

     

The next step was unboxing the Supermicro Superserver 2028TP-HC0TR. This is a very common model used by other hyper-converged vendors such as Nutanix. The nice thing about this unit is that it is readily available and the post configuration steps are quite straight forward.

 

 

Supermicro Superserver 2028TP-HC0TR front view

 

 

Supermicro Superserver 2028TP-HC0TR rear view

 

System view of Supermicro Superserver

 

Individual node view

 

 

 

 

For the purpose of this blog post we used an online configurator from a Supermicro reseller in the United States. This can be used as a sample configuration. This one had a few extra components in it like a APC UPS and the Windows 2016 licensing.

 

SuperServer 2028TP-HC0R

Configured Price: $48,161.00

Selection Summary

Barebone

Supermicro SuperServer 2028TP-HC0TR – 2U TwinPro2 – 24x SATA/SAS – Dual 10-Gigabit Ethernet – LSI 3008 12G SAS – 2000W Redundant

Processor

8 x Eight-Core Intel Xeon Processor E5-2620 v4 2.10GHz 20MB Cache (85W)

Memory

32 x 32GB PC4-19200 2400MHz DDR4 ECC Registered DIMM

Boot Drive

128GB SATA 6.0Gb/s Disk on Module (MLC) (Vertical)

Hard Drive

16 x 900GB SAS 3.0 12.0Gb/s 10000RPM – 2.5″ – Hitachi Ultrastar C10K1800 (512n)

 

8 x 960GB Samsung PM863a Series 2.5 SATA 6.0Gb/s Solid State Drive

Optical Drive

No Optical Drive Support

Network Card

4 x Mellanox 10-Gigabit Ethernet Adapter ConnectX-3 EN MCX312A (2x SFP+)

Power Protection

APC Smart-UPS 5000VA LCD 208V – 5U Rackmount

Operating System

4 x Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Datacenter (16-core)

Warranty

3 Year Advanced Parts Replacement Warranty and NBD Onsite Service

Tech Specs

Barebone

Memory Technology

DDR4 ECC Reg

North Bridge

Intel C612

Form Factor

2U

Color

Black

Memory Slots

16x 288-pin DIMM Sockets (per node)

Graphics

ASPEED AST2400 BMC

Ethernet

Intel X540 Dual port 10GBase-T (per node)

Power

2000W Redundant Platinum High-efficiency Power Supply

External Bays

6x 2.5″ Hot-swap SATA/SAS Drive Bays (per node)

Expansion Slots

1x PCI Express 3.0 x16 low-profile slot (per node)

Front Panel

Power On/Off button
System Reset button
UID button
Power status LED
HDD activity LED
2x Network activity LEDs
Universal Information (UID) LED

Back Panel

2x USB 3.0 ports
2x RJ45 10GBase-T ports
1x RJ45 Dedicated IPMI LAN port
1x VGA port
1x Fast UART 16550 port

Dimensions (WxHxD)

17.25″ (438mm) x 3.47″ (88mm) x 28.5″ (724mm)

SAS 12Gbps Controller

LSI 3008

SAS 12Gbps Ports

24 (6 per node)

SATA 6Gbps AHCI Controller

Intel C612

SATA 6Gbps AHCI Ports

24 (6 per node)

SATA 6Gbps SCU Controller

sSATA

SATA 6Gbps SCU Ports

16 (4 per node)

Processor

Product Line

Xeon E5-2600 v4

Socket

LGA2011-v3 Socket

Clock Speed

2.10 GHz

QuickPath Interconnect

8.0 GT/s

Smart Cache

20MB

Cores/Threads

8C / 16T

Intel Virtualization Technology

Yes

Intel Hyper-Threading

Yes

Wattage

85W

Memory

Technology

DDR4

Type

288-pin DIMM

Capacity

32 x 32 GB

Speed

2400 MHz

Error Checking

ECC

Signal Processing

Registered

Boot Drive

Storage Capacity

128GB

Interface

6.0Gb/s Serial ATA

Hard Drive

Storage Capacity

16 x 900GB

8 x 960GB

Interface

12.0Gb/s SAS

6.0Gb/s Serial ATA

Rotational Speed

10,000RPM

Cache

128MB

Format

512n

Endurance

1.3x DWPD

Read IOPS

97,000 IOPS (4KB)

Write IOPS

24,000 IOPS (4KB)

Read Speed

520 MB/s

Write Speed

480 MB/s

NAND

3D V-NAND

Network Card

Transmission Speed

10-Gbps Ethernet

Port Interface

SFP+

Host Interface

PCI Express 3.0 x8

Cable Medium

Copper

 

The SuperMicro server has been racked and wired as shown in the diagram below:

 

 

Wiring Configuration Cisco Nexus 9372x

 

Well folks that is where we will leave part #1 of this blog post. In the next post we will show you how to configure your Cisco Nexus Switches for this project.

 

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.

 

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Twitter: @supercristal1