Storage Spaces Direct (S2D)
S2D is a clustering technology, but I list it here separate from general failover clustering because S2D is a core component of the software-defined data center (SDDC) and has had so much focus on improvements over the past few years that it really is in a category of its own. As a forewarning, I am in no way going to be able to cover the entirety of Storage Spaces Direct in this chapter; it really deserves its own book. There are links at the end of this section that will bring you into the swaths of documentation that accompany S2D.
In a nutshell, S2D is a way to build an extremely efficient and redundant centralized, network-based storage platform entirely from Windows Server. While serving the same general purpose (file storage) as a traditional NAS or SAN device, S2D takes an entirely different approach in that it does not require specialized hardware, nor special cables or connectivity between the nodes of the S2D cluster.
To build S2D, all...
