Windows Server 2012 R2 Scale-Out File Server Clusters thoughts.

In the Windows server 2012 R2 you can build a Scale-out file server. And Microsoft does only support up to 8 nodes per file server cluster !

Keep this in mind.  Below Is a small brain dump of my SOFS and not completely out off the box ( demo usage only ) There are already somany blog post about how to setup a SOFS so I skip this here and give you only the reminders on what to think about if you do Next ,Next, Close. 

Scale-Out File Servers can host continuously available and scalable storage by using the SMB 3.0 protocol. Failover clusters in Windows Server 2012 provide the following foundational features that support this type of file server:

• A Distributed Network Name (DNN), which provides an access point for client connections to the Scale-Out File Servers.
• A Scale-out File Server resource type that supports Scale-out File Services.
• Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs) for storage.
• Integration with File Services features to configure the clustered role for the Scale-Out File Server.

You should have at least as many CSVs as you have file server cluster nodes. For instance, for a 3-node Scale-Out File Server, you should have at least 3 CSVs. Having 6 CSVs is also a valid configuration, which will help with rebalancing when one of the nodes is down for maintenance

But what if Someone forget this 8 node rule and just build a 64 node cluster and put a SOFS on top of this. Lets see under the hood of the SOFS

My cluster is in a healthy state. A 64 node cluster with Several shares .

 

 

All seems fine to me and no problems I can connect to the share so no problems here .

But you can check how many sessions there are get-smbsession

 

 

But as you can see there is no Specific IP address Given to the Scale-out File server So How does it connect ?

Eh on the name \\DemoSOFS01\demoshare1 that is right but what IP is given to the DemoSOFS01 ? yes the node address from every node.

take a look in the DNS list. so now there are 64 nodes that can handle the share

As in the pictures below you can see the Distributed Network Name (DNN)

 

DNN updates DNS when :

• DNN resource comes online and every 24 hours
• A node is added or removed to/from cluster
• A cluster network is added or removed as a client network
• IP address changes

Some testing with SQLIO on the SMB share.

So keep in mind that when you setup a Cluster and create a scale-out file server with more than 8 nodes you will see a lot of connections and my flood your network/storage.  Every node is connecting !

 

• If you’re interested in learning more about the scalability of the file server clusters and review the results of our Hyper-V over SMB test using an 8-node Scale-Out file server cluster for storage, check this TechEd presentation: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2012/WSV410.
• If you’re interested in learning more about the performance of the file server, I would recommend reviewing our TechEd presentation on the Hyper-V over SMB scenario. It includes some of our latest performance numbers: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013/MDC-B335.
• If you want to look closer into the upgrade scenario using the Copy Cluster Roles Wizard, you can review this TechEd presentation: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013/MDC-B331.
• If you want to look at end-to-end performance for a private cloud configuration using a scale-out file server, you can review this blog post: http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2013/02/04/hyper-v-over-smb-performance-considerations.aspx