# Introduction

Windows 2016 Datacenter allows you to create a hyper-converged solution for your datacenter thanks to a new feature called Storage Spaces Direct. I thought that was a cool feat and I felt like I needed to have this set up at least once.

In this guide we'll setup a Hyper-converged solution such as the likes of Nutanix, Simplivity and other vendors offer.

## I actually have no idea, what is a Hyper-converged cluster?

Just taking a quote from [this page](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-spaces/hyper-converged-solution-using-storage-spaces-direct)

> The hyper-converged deployment scenario has the Hyper-V (compute) and Storage Spaces Direct (storage) components on the same cluster. Virtual machine files are stored on local CSVs. This allows for scaling Hyper-V compute clusters together with the storage it is using. Once Storage Spaces Direct is configured and the CSV volumes are available, configuring and provisioning Hyper-V is the same process and uses the same tools that you would use with any other Hyper-V deployment on a failover cluster.

![](https://3108435343-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-Lp2rB1gAFhoLXwsXIIR%2F-Lp2rDugz51IbJxnu7OE%2F-Lp2s59yBHZkSXeMM0Dc%2Fstoragespacesdirecthyperconverged.png?generation=1568801876727333\&alt=media)

If this still blows your mind. [This 3 minute youtube movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IUX6swaOC4) explains it pretty good.

## Considerations

There are other guides out there. If you have the hardware, I recommend having a look at [this excellent whitepaper](https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Understand-Hyper-Converged-bae286dd#content) with a working example (configuration and everything) of a 2-node cluster. I'll basically cover the same with some key differences:

* They have the hardware and are closer to a real setup.
* A 2-node cluster needs a witness to keep an eye on them. They use Azure for this. I don't have an Azure account at the moment so I'll use a local file server to be the witness.
* They decide to put a DC on each server (Node), running under a local account. Which might be efficient when it comes down to licensing... I guess? It just seems weird to me. My DC is separate and maybe easier to comprehend. At least, to me. And to be honest, I believe I'm joined by a lot of Sysadmins when I say that I like to have a separate domain controller, not being hosted on the very infrastructure which can fail... call me old-fashoined if you must.

All in all, consider my setup the "poor man's lab" setup.

If you still have the impression this topic is too big to wrap your head around it, try this well-written [Hyperconvergence for dummies](https://www.hpe.com/us/en/resources/integrated-systems/hyperconverged-infrastructure-dummies.html), courtesy of HP Enterprise.

Before we move on, check [this awesome POC](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2016/10/24/microsoft-and-intel-squeezed-hyper-convergence-into-the-overhead-bin/) Microsoft made at one of their events. Too bad that idea is probably in the bin somewhere now.

Last but not least, please consider security insafeties and don't use this guide as a carbon copy to implement it into a live network. That would be very... inconsiderate.

I hope this guide will be informative to you and I gladly welcome feedback, remarks, comments, etc..

Ken Vanden Branden

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenvdb/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenvdb/)

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This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
