Users Guide

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Windows Server 2012 R2 best practices
MPIO configuration
Configuring Multipath I/O (MPIO) on the storage node enables Windows Server to use alternate paths in
the event of a failure, and provides load balancing. When properly cabled and using dual-port SAS
physical disks, each server has two physical paths to each physical disk.
The required MPIO load balancing policy for this solution is Round Robin. Round Robin is the optimal
MPIO load balancing policy for workloads with random I/O. For workloads with mostly sequential I/O, it is
recommended to use the Least Blocks MPIO load balancing policy instead.
Run the following PowerShell command to enable Round Robin.
Set-MSDSMGlobalDefaultLoadBalancePolicy -Policy RR
Run the following PowerShell command to enable Least Blocks.
Set-MSDSMGlobalDefaultLoadBalancePolicy -Policy LB
Windows Server 2012 R2 SMB considerations
Dell requires running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 on the storage nodes. Dell recommends you to
run Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 on all SMB clients. You can use Microsoft Windows Server 2012
for SMB clients, Dell recommends that you use Windows Server 2012 R2 so that the SMB clients have
access to the new SMB features introduced in Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2.
Table 3. New and updated features of SMB in Windows Server 2012 R2
Feature Summary
Automatic rebalancing of Scale-Out File Server
clients
Changes the functionality on how SMB clients
connect to each scale-out file share. SMB clients
are redirected to the node in the cluster, which
provides the optimal path to the CSV. This reduces
redirected I/O between the storage nodes.
Improved performance of SMB Direct (SMB over
RDMA)
Provides various performance improvements for
small I/O workloads.
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